-.     M     .-*:     .^:     :*:     .-^     :^     r}^     i^.     ^.     i^.     ^.     ^.     ^.     ^.     •^.     .^ 

:^.  "rHr  '^.  r{-:  i^"  .^:  :-t:  ri^:  :-^  ri^  '^.  m  :-*:  :^'  :-^"  '^.  m 
-.  .^:  :^'  '^.  .^-:  .^'  r^-^  pf:  r^:  "ri^:  tK-:  ':+:  p?^  ^  ^f:  .^  :^ 
:^K  "r^r-:  .^'  :■*:  :*:  r{':  .^'  .^:  :^:  rin  ;-^  ":*:  .^  .^:  :^  ^:;|^:  .^• 

rir"  'i^.  .^'  i^'  'rf^  :*■:  :¥.  '^.  7^.  "i^:  "i^"  w^.  '^.  '^.  m  :*-:  .^ 
^  :-^r:'  f^'  r}^"  1^"  '^.  .^:  tI^;  '^f^  :^-:  i-^in  :^  i^  .^  :*i  :^  .^'  : 
:^K  ri^  i^  7}^  ri^  ^^  PK  i^i^  i^r  i^  i^  :^  i^  :i{^  :^  :h^ 


^  i^  :^  i^  :^  r^: 
i^iii  :^  i^  :*::*:  : 


aU:  ' 


'^. 


'^.'i^.'^'^.'^'i^.'^i^ 


:*:  i^  '-^  '^  yf.  '^  '^  'i^.  i¥.  yf. 


"f.  'iif.  W  '^.  '^.  '^.  'i^.  'i^.  'i^.  :'f^.  '^.  '^.  '^.  'i^.  '^.  'yf.  'i^.  . 
'^.     W.     ':^.     '^    :-^'     .^-     Hr     :-^     rl^:     r^     rl^     'i^.    .^     i^"     y&.    .^i     :^ 

[^  .^f  '^.  ^'  :*-;  jii^  :-fif-:  -^^  -i^.  -i^,  .^:  -p^f-  •^.  ;-ir-  .^^  i^fi  :={=■;,: 
'^.  '-^  '^.  .^  ){-:  '7f.  '^.  'i^.  'i^.  '^.  'iff.  '^.  :^r:  :-^'  .^  .4^   i^ 

K  :h^'  .^  r}^:  rir  'i^.  'i^.  .^:  ri-  ^i^  :-h?:  ri-  i^-  :^  ^^  i^i  :^.  ; 
¥  ^'  :-H^"  :■+:'  '^.  ^:  'i^  r'r:'  p{^  i^  :^  i^  :-^;  :*:  :^;  .^  :*: 

1=:    :f{f:    --flf    :=^:     ■^.    i^.    JHt"    'r^^     r{t     rf!     i^fh    i^    W.    "^    '^.     i*!    .^^ 


''^.    rfi'  ':-^:'    T^-"    ^'    '■^.    'i^.    '^.    'i^.    i*i    i^i    ^^    i*i    '^-    ^^    i^i    i^r 

H^"  >•■  ■•■={f-'  ■•■^'  ■•4-:"  >:  '^.  'i^.  'i^.  '^.  '^.  i*-:  ^:  ^:  .^  :*■:  .^ 
'.•:^'  -^ff"  '^jf"  '^jf:  ^  i^:^  ^  :^  i^  r^  i^  i^  :*:  ;^  :H^  4{4:  :^ 

•:4f  -^  -^  '-^  ^  -^  -^  -^  -iff.  -^  ^.  -^.  ^.  ^   ^.  -^  yf: 

M-     M.-     -K     -j^"    -jb:     u::     H:;     -jK     -jl:     jt:     y::     y^'     4?.     4f-  4:: 


■:^. 


^-  -y--  'i^i.;-   '^    -^    -^    -^    :j^    -^^    IH^    t^^    i^i    't^:.   rJ^. 

V"V  V  >:'  ••*^  •^-  '^-  '^-  ^^  .'^. 

■j^    -j^     -^    -^    '4f    -^     -4^     .4^:-.     :^     .-^^f     :=|r     .-^.     :+:     tIt    .-^     :*:     vf^: 


yf  yf  yf 


yf  yf:  yf 


ykykykykW.yf:yf.w.yt 


:;^-^.::)^y^-^i^yf.yf.yf.y(r.y(rytryfr  4r.  j(r,   y(r,  y^, 

^■jy^-j^-4^  y(^-^y^yfyfW.yfyfyf^.y^^:yf.yf.  yt 

±:  --Ay  --Ay  -A-i   -4:   -4^   yf   '^   y^   -^   ■■*■•   ^   ^   !*:   4r    y?;   ^h  / 


.-^     r^     .-^     .•+:     .-t:     rr:     rf:     .-^fc     ."^     .-^     :+:     .-^J:     ."t:     .In     :1=:     -?^     .-n^ 

}^  .^  .^  rih  .^  i*:"  .^"  .^  '^.  .^:  .^:  .^'  .^:  .^:  .^  .^:  i*:  : 

M  ;•*:  .^  i+i  -^  '^.  .^  :*■:  :*:  "r*^  :¥.  w.  .^:  .^  .^  .^"  i*: 
It-  :^  :•*■:  m  '^.  .^  .^  ;^  tI^:  .^  :^  :*:  :^:  :+:  ¥.  ¥.  m  : 

'^.  i*-:  .^  .^"  .^  ^  .^^:  :^'  .^:  :+:  :^'  ^f-:  i;^  .^  .:f^-  .^r-  .^: 
^;  .^:  i^:  ;■*:  m  :¥.  :■*:■  :h^"  'i¥.  .^  :^  :■*:  .^  0.  m  :*■:  .^  : 

.^  i^:  .41^  .^:  :*■:  .^"  :■*:  ;■*:  :-^  .^  i-^^  :*i  .^  ^i^  m  m-  .^ 
^:  'M  .^  .^  .^  :*:  .^  i^'  :*;  .^  .^:  .^}r-  :^  :^  -^^  .i^-  .^:  : 

.^:.  .^.  .:*•:.  .:^".  .rf- ,.:;}-  j^  .^:  1:}^  j^^.  :^  1^^  j^  j^:  j^  .i^:  .i;^ 

}^!    ."Hn     '0.    0.    .-^^     ir:     rlr     .-^'^     .-^     i^!     i^!    i^     W:    :¥:     M     'tt.     0.     : 

.^  iri  :*■;  :h^  .^  .^  .^"  .^  :*:  .^  :*•:  .^:  ;-^:  .^  :-^:  .^  .^: 

^    0    t\^     W:     'yk     W:     0     0     y^    0    W:     '0.     y^.     'i^.    '0.     M    M 


:*;  ':^. 


?r.     yr. 


'0.     i¥. 


W:i¥:W:0y^ykW:007^ 


\r-00^00W:0     y^^c^     W:     0     W:     0     0     ^     '0     I 
W:00W:0i¥:00000W:0W:000 

^  :^:  rfi  i^  7}^  Tih  :*:  r}^  ^{^  i^  i^  if^^:  .^  i^:  :*:  .^'  i^  ; 

tI^  pi^  f^  .^  :-^  iH^  .^  '0.  :-^:  .^  ^  .^  :-^  .^"  :^:  7^.  :*: 
hi  .^  :h^"  It!  iiih  :+■:  :*■:  '0.  :¥.  .^  .^:  7^.  :■*■:  i;^:  .^  ;■*-:  .^'  ; 

.^  .^  :h^:  'm  .^  .^  f^^:  .^  .^  .^:  p^'  :-^;  .^  :■*■:  .^:  .^"  .^^' 

^.    M    W:    y\^    0    y^    '0.    :-*:    '0.    '0.    .^"    i^"    M    'yr.    y^.     '0.    '0.     ': 

.¥.  0  0  0  y^  t\^  f^:  'M  .^"  .^:  .^  .^"  .^  )^:  :^  .^:  ^k: 

■¥.  i^  0  0  0  .^:  .^'  0  .^  .^  .^'  .^-  i^:  .^:  if^:  :^:  r*^ 

K  i^"  :*:  .^:  i^  :^:  ^f^  .^"  .^  .^  .^:  .^:  .^'  .^  r^.  .^  .^:  ; 

.^  :*:  .^  .^  .^:  :*i  r^^  .^  :^  'm  .^  :*:  .^  .^:  .^  i*:  :*■: 

^.  .^  .^"  .^:  .^  'y^.  i^  .^'  :*i  .^  .^  i^;  .^:  :*;  .^  .^  .^  : 

.¥.  :*■:  .^  i*:  i?}^:  .^*  :^t  .:*:  .^^i-;  :fi=:  -^^  -^^  --^^  i^,  .^  i^,  ^ 
1^;  :*i  :*■:  .^'  :^  .^  .^  .^:  .^:  :*•:  .^'  .^'  :^:  .^'  :-^:  :-*■:  .^-:  i 

:¥.  :^  :■+■:  :^  i^i^:  :^  .^:  .^:  ^:  '0.  :*■:  .^  .^  .^  ;■*•:  rir  :=k' 
^i^^^^^Wii^^  .^  .^  .^  .^  ;■*-:  :■*:  :■*-:  -^  -^  : 

.^    :*:■    r^    :*:    rfi    .^"  yr.    'i¥.    'M    y^.    '0.     '0.    r^.    .^    ri^'    ^^    !*■• 

t^  .^  .^  :*i  :^  :■*:  :^  .^  iHt  i^:  w^.  •¥.  'm  i^  .^'  ■^■'  ¥ 
Hi^  .¥  .¥'!*:  :^  :*:  .¥:  .^i^  :+■  :+;:*:  ^ir;  :h^  :¥.  '^r:  '^  '.¥: 

¥.  '0.  'M  .¥  i^:  !*:  :*:  .^  :^  -^  :^  :*■:  in-  i^  .^  '-^  ^ 
¥  :*:  :*i  :^  :^  :*::*:  i^  i^  iH^  :*::+::+::¥  i*:'  ■¥"  "iH^ 

^     'y\fr.     -0.     W:     W:     0     '•^.     'y^.     ^     ^     ii^     W:     W:     W:     W.     ¥     ¥ 

:*-:  :*■::■+::+::+:  '0.  w.  .^  .¥:  :*:  .¥:  :^  .^  .¥:  -r^:  >•  '.¥• 

4=:     y^'    ^"    •-4^"     :*:    •4?:     4^    4^    y^-    y::     4::    H:.-    aj    y?:    y::     J::    ^t: 


■¥■ 


\y{,\. 


l°Cc  cou~ 


LIFE, 


LETTERS,  AND  LITERARY  REMAINS, 


OF 


JOHN  KEATS. 


EDITED   BY 


RICHARD  MONCKTON  MILNES. 


COMPLETE    IN   ONE    VOLUME 


NEW- YORK  : 
GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM,  155  BROADWAY 

1848. 


Leavitt,  Trow  &  Co.,  Printers, 
49  Ann-street. 


FRANCIS  JEFFREY, 

ONE    OF    THE    SENATORS    OF    THE    COLLEGE    OF    JUSTICE    IN    SCOTLAND. 


Dear  Lord  Jeffrey, 

It  is  with  great  pleasure  that  I  dedicate  to  you  these  late 
memorials  and  relics  of  a  man,  whose  early  genius  you  did  much  to 
rescue  from  the  alternative  of  obloquy  or  oblivion. 

The  merits  which  your  generous  sagacity  perceived  under  so  many 
disadvantages,  are  now  recognized  by  every  student  and  lover  of  poetry  in 
this  country,  and  have  acquired  a  still  brighter  fame,  in  that  other  and 
wider  England  beyond  the  Atlantic,  whose  national  youth  is,  perhaps, 
more  keenly  susceptible  of  poetic  impressions  and  delights,  than  the 
niaturer  and  more  conscious  fatherland. 

I  think  that  the  poetical  portion  of  this  volume,  will  confirm  the  opinions 
you  hazarded  at  the  time,  when  such  views  were  hazardous  even  to  a 
critical  reputation  so  well-founded  as  your  own :  and  I  believe  that  you 
will  find  in  the  clear  transcript  of  the  poet's  mind,  conveyed  in  these 
familiar  letters,  more  than  a  vindication  of  all  the  interest  you  took  in  a 
character,  whose  moral  purity  and  nobleness  is  as  significant  as  its  intel- 
lectual excellence. 

It  has  no  doubt  frequently  amused  you  to  have  outlived  literary 
reputations,  whose  sound  and  glitter  you  foresaw  would  not  stand  the 


DEDICATION. 


tests  of  time  and  altered  circumstance ;  but  it  is  a  far  deeper  source  of 
satisfaction  to  have  received  the  ratification  by  public  opinion  of  judg- 
ments, once  doubted  or  derided,  and  thus  to  have  anticipated  the  tardy 
justice  which  a  great  work  of  art  frequently  obtains,  when  the  hand  of 
the  artist  is  cold,  and  the  heart  that  palpitated  under  neglect  is  still 
for  ever. 

This  composition,  or  rather  compilation,  has  been  indeed  a  labor  of 
love,  and  I  rejoice  to  prefix  to  it  a  name  not  dearer  to  public  esteem  than 
to  private  friendship, — not  less  worthy  of  gratitude  and  of  affection  than 
of  high  professional  honors  and  wide  intellectual  fame. 
I  remain,  dear  Lord  Jeffrey, 

Yours  with  respect  and  regard, 

R.   MONCKTON   MiLNES. 

Pall  Mall,  Aug.  1, 1848. 


1 


PREFACE* 


It  is  now  fifteen  years  ago  that  I  met,  at  the  villa  of  my  distinguished 
friend,  Mr.  Landor,  on  the  beautiful  hill-side  of  Fiesole,  Mr.  Charles 
Brown,  a  retired  Rnssiai-merchant,  with  whose  name  I  was  already 
familiar  as  the  generous  protector  and  devoted  friend  of  the  Poet  Keats. 
Mr.  Severn,  the  artist,  whom  I  had  known  at  Rome,  had  already  satisfied 
much  of  my  curiosity  respecting  a  man,  whom  the  gods  had  favored  with 
great  genius  and  early  death,  but  had  added  to  one  gift  the  consciousness 
of  public  disregard,  and  to  the  other  the  trial  of  severe  physical  suffering. 
With  the  works  of  Keats  I  had  ahvays  felt  a  strong  poetical  sympathy, 
accompanied  by  a  ceaseless  wonder  at  their  wealth  of  diction  and  of  their 
imager)',  which  was  increased  by  the  consciousness  that  all  that  he  had 
produced  was  rather  a  promise  than  an  accomplishment;  he  had  ever 
seemed  to  me  to  have  done  more  at  school  in  poetry,  than  almost  any 
other  man  who  had  made  it  the  object  of  mature  life.  This  adolescent 
character  had  given  me  an  especial  interest  in  the  moral  history  of  this 
Marcellus  of  the  empire  of  English  song,  and  when  my  imagination 
measured  what  he  might  have  become  by  what  he  was,  it  stood  astounded 
at  the  result. 

Therefore  the  circumstances  of  his  life  and  writings  appeared  to  me 
of  a  high  literary  interest,  and  I  looked  on  whatever  unpublished  produc- 
tions of  his  that  fell  in  my  way  with  feelings  perhaps  not  in  all  cases 
warranted  by  their  intrinsic  merits.     Pew  of  these  remains  had  escaped 

1* 


PREFACE. 


the  affectionate  care  of  Mr.  Brown,  and  he  told  me  that  he  only  deferred 
their  publication  till  his  return  to  England.  This  took  place  two  or  three 
years  afterwards,  and  the  preliminary  arrangements  for  giving  them  to  the 
world  were  actually  in  progress,  when  tlie  accident  of  attending  a 
meeting  on  the  subject  of  the  colonization  of  New  Zealand  altered 
Mr.  Brown's  plans,  and  determined  him  to  transfer  his  fortunes  and  the 
closing  years  of  his  life  to  the  antipodes.  Before  he  left  this  country  he 
confided  to  my  care  all  his  collections  of  Keat&'s  writings,  accompanied 
with  a  biographical  notice,  and  I  engaged  to  use  them  to  the  best  of  my 
ability  for  the  purpose  of  vindicating  the  character  and  advancing  the  fame 
of  liis  honored  friend. 

As  soon  as  my  intention  was  made  known,  I  received  from  the  friends 
and  acquaintances  of  the  poet  the  kindest  assistance.  His  earliest  guide 
and  companion  in  literature,  Mr.  Cowden  Clarke,  and  his  comrades  in 
youthful  study,  Mr.  Holmes  and  Mr.  Felton  Mathew,  supplied  me  with  all 
their  recollections  of  his  boyhood ;  Mr.  Reynolds,  whom  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt, 
in  the  "Examiner"  of  1816,  associated  with  Shelley  and  Keats  as  the 
three  poets  of  promise  whom  time  was  ripening,  contributed  the  rich  store 
of  correspondence,  which  began  with  Keats's  introduction  into  literary 
society,  and  never  halted  to  the  last;  Mr.  Haslam  and  Mr.  Dilke  aided  me 
with  letters  and  remembrances,  and  many  persons  who  casually  heard  of 
my  project  forwarded  me  information  tliat  circumstances  had  placed  in 
their  way.  To  the  enlightened  publishers,  Messrs.  Taylor  and  Hessey, 
and  to  Mr.  Olher,  I  am  also  indebted  for  willing  co-operation. 

Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  had  already  laid  his  offering  on  the  .shrine  of  his 
beloved  brother  in  the  trials  and  triumphs  of  genius,  and  could  only 
encourage  me  by  his  interest  and  sympathy.  • 

I  have  already  mentioned  Mr.  Severn,  witliout  wliom  I  should  probably 
have  never  thought  of  undertaking  tlie  task,  and  who  now  offered  me  the 
additional  inducement  of  an  excellent  portrait  of  his  friend  to  prefix  to  the 
book :  he  has  also  in  his  possession  a  small  full-length  of  Keats  sitting 
reading,  w'hich  is  considered  a  striking  and  characteristic  resemblance. 

But  perhaps  the  most  valuable,  as  the  most  confidential  communica- 


PREFACE. 


tion  I  received,  was  from  the  gentleman  who  has  married  the  widow  of 
George  Keats,  and  who  placed  at  my  disposal,  with  the  consent  of  the 
family,  the  letters  George  received  from  his  brother  after  he  emigrated 
to  America.  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  omitting  some  few  unimportant 
passages  which  referred  exclusively  to  individuals  or  transitory  circum- 
stances, regarding  this  part  of  the  correspondence  as  of  a  more  private 
character  than  any  other  that  has  fallen  into  my  hands. 

I  am  not  indeed  unprepared  for  tlie  charge,  that  I  have  published  in 
this  volume  much  tliat  might  well  have  been  omitted,  both  for  its  own 
irrelevancy,  and  from  the  decent  reverence  that  should  always  veil,  more 
or  less,  the  intimate  family  concerns  and  the  deep  internal  life  of  those 
that  are  no  more.  Never  has  such  remonstrance  been  more  ably  expressed 
than  in  the  following  passage  from  Mr.  Wordsworth's  "  Letter  to  a  friend 
of  Robert  Burns,"*  and  which,  on  account  of  the  rarity  of  the  pamphlet, 
I  here  transcribe  : — 

"  Biography,  though  differing  in  some  essentials  from  works  of  fiction, 
is  nevertheless  like  them  an  art — an  art,  the  laws  of  which  are  determined 
by  the  imperfections  of  our  nature  and  the  constitution  of  society.  Trutii 
is  not  here,  as  in  the  sciences  and  in  natural  philosophy,  to  be  sought 
without  scruple,  and  promulgated  for  its  own  fake  upon  the  mere  chance 
of  its  being  serviceable,  but  only  for  obviously  justifying  purposes,  moral 
or  intellectual.  Silence  is  a  privilege  of  the  grave,  a  right  of  the  departed ; 
let  him,  therefore,  who  infringes  that  right  by  speaking  publicly  of,  for,  or 
against  those  who  cannot  speak  for  themselves,  take  heed  that  he  open 
not  his  mouth  without  a  sufficient  sanction.  *  *  *  *  The  general 
obligation  upon  which  I  have  insisted  is  especially  binding  upon  those  who 
undertake  the  biography  of  authors.  Assuredly  there  is  no  cause  why 
the  lives  of  that  class  of  men  should  be  pried  into  with  diligent  curiosity, 
and  laid  open  with  the  same  disregard  of  reserve  which  may  sometimes 
be  expedient  in  composing  the  history  of  men  who  have  borne  an  active  part 
in  the  world.     Such  thorough  knowledge  of  tlie  good  and  bad  qualities  of 

»  Published  1816. 


8  PREFACE. 

these  latter,  as  can  only  be  obtained  by  a  scrutiny  of  their  private  bias, 
conduces  to  explain,  not  only  their  own  public  conduct,  but  that  of  those 
with  whom  they  have  acted.  Nothing  of  this  applies  to  authors,  consid- 
ered merely  as  authors.  Our  business  is  with  their  books,  to  understand 
and  to  enjoy  them.  And  of  poets  more  especially  it  is  true,  that  if  their 
works  be  good,  they  contain  within  themselves  all  that  is  necessary  to 
their  being  comprehended  and  relished.  It  should  seem  that  the  ancients 
thought  in  this  manner,  for  of  the  eminent  Greek  and  Roman  poets,  few 
and  scanty  memorials  were,  I  believe,  ever  prepared,  and  fewer  still  are 
preserved.  It  is  delightful  to  read  what,  in  the  happy  exercise  of  his  own 
genius,  Horace  chooses  to  communicate  of  himself  and  of  his  friends ;  but 
I  confess  I  am  not  so  much  a  lover  of  knowledge  independent  of  its 
quality,  as  to  make  it  likely  that  it  would  much  rejoice  me  were  I  to  hear 
that  records  of  the  Sabine  poet  and  his  contemporaries,  composed  upon 
the  Boswellian  plan,  had  been  unearthed  among  the  ruins  of  Hercula- 
neum." 

With  this  earnest  warning  before  me,  I  hesitated  some  time  as  to  the 
application  of  my  materials.  It  was  easy  for  me  to  construct  out  of  them 
a  signal  monument  of  the  worth  and  genius  of  Keats :  by  selecting  the 
circumstances  and  the  passages  that  illustrated  the  extent  of  his  abilities, 
the  purity  of  his  objects  and  the  nobleness  of  his  nature,  I  might  have 
presented  to  the  world  a  monography,  apparently  perfect,  and  at  least  as 
real  as  those  which  the  affection  or  pride  of  the  relatives  or  dependents  of 
remarkable  personages  generally  prefix  to  their  works.  But  I  could  not 
be  unconscious  that,  if  I  were  able  to  present  to  the  public  view  the  true 
personality  of  a  man  of  genius,  without  either  wounding  the  feelings  of 
mourning  friends  or  detracting  from  his  existing  reputation,  I  should  be 
doing  a  inncii  l)ettcr  thing  in  itself,  and  one  much  more  becoming  that 
office  of  biographer,  which  I,  a  personal  stranger  to  the  individual,  had 
consented  to  undertake.  For,  if  I  left  the  memorials  of  Keats  to  tell  their 
own  tale,  they  would  in  truth  be  the  book,  and  my  business  would  be 
almost  limited  to  their  collection  and  arrangement ;  whereas,  if  I  only 
regarded  them  as  the  materials  of  my  own  work,  the  general  effect  would 


PREFACE. 


chiefly  depend  on  my  ability  of  construction,  and  the  temptation  to  render 
the  facts  of  the  story  subservient  to  the  excellence  of  the  work  of  art 
would  never  have  been  absent. 

I  had  else  to  consider  which  procedure  was  most  likely  to  raise  the 
character  of  Keats  in  the  estimation  of  those  most  capable  of  judging  it. 
I  saw  how  grievously  he  was  misapprehended  even  by  many  who  wished 
to  see  in  him  only  what  was  best.  I  perceived  that  many,  who  heartily 
admired  his  poetry,  looked  on  it  as  the  production  of  a  wayward,  erratic 
genius,  self-indulgent  in  conceits,  disrespectful  of  the  rules  and  limitations 
of  Art,  not  only  unlearned  but  careless  of  knowledge,  not  only  exag- 
gerated but  despising  proportion.  I  knew  that  his  moral  disposition  was 
assumed  to  be  weak,  gluttonous  of  sensual  excitement,  querulous  of 
severe  judgment,  fantastical  in  its  tastes,  and  lackadaisical  in  its  senti- 
ments. He  was  all  but  universally  believed  to  have  been  killed  by  a 
stupid,  savage  article  in  a  review,  and  to  the  compassion  generated  by  his 
untoward  fate  he  was  held  to  owe  a  certain  personal  interest,  which  his 
poetic  reputation  hardly  justified. 

When,  then,  I  found,  from  the  undeniable  documentary  evidence  of 
his  inmost  life,  that  nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth  than  this 
opinion,  it  seemed  to  me,  that  a  portrait,  so  dissimilar  from  the  general 
assumption,  would  hardly  obtain  credit,  and  might  rather  look  like  the 
production  of  a  paradoxical  partiality  than  the  result  of  conscientious 
inquiry.  I  had  to  show  that  Keats,  in  his  intellectual  character,  rever- 
enced simplicity  and  truth  above  all  things,  and  abhorred  whatever  was 
merely  strange  and  strong — that  he  was  ever  learning  and  ever  growing 
more  conscious  of  his  own  ignorance, — that  his  models  were  always  the 
highest  and  the  purest,  and  that  his  earnestness  in  aiming  at  their  excel- 
lence, was  only  equal  to  the  humble  estimation  of  his  own  efforts — that 
his  poetical  course  was  one  of  distinct  and  positive  progress,  exliibiting  a 
self-command  and  self-direction  which  enabled  him  to  understand  and 
avoid  the  faults  even  of  the  writers  he  was  most  naturally  inclined  to 
esteem,  and  to  liberate  himself  at  once,  not  only  from  the  fetters  of  literary 
partisanship,  but  even  from  the  subtler  influences  and  associations  of  the 


10  PREFACE. 


accidental  literary  spirit  of  his  own  time.  I  had  also  to  exhibit  the  moral 
peculiarities  of  Keats  as  the  effects  of  a  strong  will,  passionate  tempera- 
ment, indomitable  courage,  and  a  somewhat  contemptuous  disregard  of 
other  men — to  represent  him  as  unflinchingly  meeting  all  criticism  of  his 
writings,  and  caring  for  the  Article,  which  was  supposed  to  have  had  such 
homicidal  success,  just  so  far  as  it  was  an  evidence  of  the  little  power  he 
had  as  yet  acquired  over  the  sympathies  of  mankind,  and  no  more.  I  had 
to  make  prominent  the  brave  front  he  opposed  to  poverty  and  pain — to 
show,  how  love  of  pleasure  was  in  liim  continually  subordinate  to  higher 
aspirations,  notwithstanding  the  sharp  zest  of  enjoyment  which  his  mer- 
curial nature  conferred  on  him ;  and  above  all,  I  had  to  illustrate  how 
little  he  abused  his  full  possession  of  that  imaginative  faculty,  which 
enables  the  poet  to  vivify  the  phantoms  of  the  hour,  and  to  purify  the 
objects  of  sense,  beyond  what  the  moralist  may  sanction,  or  the  mere 
practical  man  can  understand. 

I  thus  came  to  the  conclusion,  that  it  was  best  to  act  simply  as  editor 
of  the  Life  which  was,  as  it  were,  already  written.  I  had  not  the  right, 
which  many  men  yet  living  might  claim  from  personal  knowledge,  of 
analyzing  motives  of  action  and  explaining  courses  of  conduct ;  I  could 
tell  no  more  tlian  was  told  to  me,  and  that  I  have  done  as  faithfully  as  I 
was  able  :  and  I  now  leave  the  result  in  the  hands  of  the  few  whose  habits 
of  thought  incline  them  to  such  subjects,  not,  indeed,  in  the  hope  that  their 
task  will  be  as  agreeable  as  mine  has  been,  but  in  the  belief,  that  they  will 
find  in  it  much  that  is  not  mine  to  appreciate  and  enjoy :  a  previous  admi- 
ration of  the  works  of  Keats  which  have  been  already  published  is  the 
test  of  their  authority  to  approve  or  condemn  these  supplementary  memo- 
rials, and  I  admit  no  other. 


FAC-SIWILE    OF    KEATS  S    HANDWRITING. 


/ 


ih  ou^  flu   IMp  fit^^  cv'AiJZ  CL^^  U  UdC  ^ 
Hud  4u    ijLO/r  .  ^0  /^d  ^Lu?  'ticc^ 


LIFE  AND  LETTEKS  OF  JOHN  KEATS. 


To  the  Poet,  if  lo  any  man,  it  may  justly  be  conceded  to  be 
estimated  by  what  he  has  written  rather  than  by  what  he  has 
done,  and  to  be  judged  by  the  productions  of  his  genius  rather 
than  by  the  circumstances  of  his  outward  life.  For  although  the 
choice  and  treatment  of  a  subject  may  enable  us  to  contemplate 
the  mind  of  the  Historian,  the  Novelist,  or  the  Philosopher,  yet 
our  observation  will  be  more  or  less  limited  and  obscured  by  the 
sequence  of  events,  the  forms  of  manners,  or  the  exigencies  of 
theory,  and  the  personality  of  the  writer  must  be  frequently  lost ; 
while  the  Poet,  if  his  utterances  be  deep  and  true,  can  hardly 
hide  himself  even  beneath  the  epic  or  dramatic  veil,  and  often 
makes  of  the  rough  public  ear  a  confessional  into  which  to  pour 
the  richest  treasures  and  holiest  secrets  of  his  soul.  His  Life  is 
in  his  writings,  and  his  Poems  are  his  works  indeed. 

The  biography  therefore  of  a  poet  can  be  little  better  than  a 
comment  on  his  Poems,  even  when  itself  of  long  duration,  and 
checkered  with  strange  and  various  adventures :  but  these  pages 
concern  one  whose  whole  story  may  be  summed  up  in  the  compo- 
sition of  three  small  volumes  of  verse,  some  earnest  friendships, 
one  passion,  and  a  premature  death.  As  men  die,  so  they  walk 
among  posterity  ;  and  our  impression  of  Keats  can  only  be  that 
of  a  noble  nature  persevcringly  testing  its  own  powers,  of  a  man- 
ly heart  bravely  surmounting  its  first  hard  experience,  and  of  an 


14  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

imagination  ready  to  inundate  the  world,  yet  learning  to  flow 
within  regulated  channels,  and  abating  its  violence  without  les- 
sening its  strength. 

It  is  thus  no  more  than  tlie  beginning  of  a  Life  which  can 
here  be  written,  and  nothing  but  a  conviction  of  the  singularity 
and  greatness  of  the  fragment  would  justify  any  one  in  attempt- 
ing to  draw  general  attention  to  its  shape  and  substance.  The 
interest  indeed  of  the  Poems  of  Keats  has  already  had  much  of  a 
personal  character :  and  his  early  end,  like  that  of  Chatterton, 
(of  whom  he  ever  speaks  with  a  sort  of  prescient  sympathy,)  has, 
in  some  degree,  stood  him  in  stead  of  a  fulfilled  poetical  exist- 
ence. Ever  improving  in  his  art,  he  gave  no  reason  to  believe 
that  his  marvelous  faculty  had  any  thing  in  common  with  that 
lyrical  facility  which  many  men  have  manifested  in  boyhood  or 
in  youth,  but  which  has  grown  torpid  or  disappeared  altogether 
with  the  advance  of  mature  life  ;  in  him  no  one  doubts  that  a  true 
genius  was  suddenly  arrested,  and  they  who  will  not  allow  him  to 
have  won  his  place  in  the  first  ranks  of  English  poets  will  not  de- 
ny the  promise  of  his  candidature.  When  a  man  has  had  a  fair 
field  of  existence  before  him  and  free  scope  for  the  exhibition  of 
his  energies,  it  becomes  a  superfluous  and  generally  an  unprofita- 
ble task  to  collect  together  the  unimportant  incidents  of  his  career 
and  hoard  up  the  scattered  remnants  of  his  mind,  most  of  which 
he  would  probably  have  himself  wished  to  be  forgotten.  But  in 
the  instance  of  Keats,  it  is  a  natural  feeling  in  those  who  knew 
and  loved,  and  not  an  extravagant  one  in  those  who  merely  admire 
him,  to  desire,  as  far  as  may  be,  to  repair  the  injustice  of  destiny, 
and  to  glean  whatever  relics  they  may  find  of  a  harvest  of  which 
so  few  full  sheaves  were  permitted  to  be  garnered. 

The  interest  which  attaclies  to  the  family  of  every  remarka- 
ble  individual  has  failed  to  discover  in  that  of  Keats  any  thing 
more  than  that  the  influences  with  which  his  childhood  was  sur- 
rounded  were  virtuous  and  honorable.  His  father,  who  was 
employed  in  the  establishment  of  Mr.  .Tennings,  the  proprietor  of 
large  livery-stables  on  the  Pavement  in  Moorfields,  nearly  oppo- 
site the  entrance  into  Finsbury  Circus,  became  his  master's  son- 
in-law,   and  is  still   remembered   as  a  man  of  excellent  natural 


JOHN  KEATS.  15 


sense,  lively  and  energetic  countenance,  and  entire  freedom  from 
any  vulgarity  or  assumption  on  account  of  his  prosperous  alliance. 
He  was  killed  by  a  fall  from  his  horse  in  1804,  at  the  early  age 
of  thirty-six.  The  mother,  a  lively,  intelligent  woman,  was  sup- 
posed to  have  prematurely  hastened  the  birth  of  John  by  her 
passionate  love  of  amusement,  though  his  constitution  gave  no 
signs  of  the  peculiar  debility  of  a  seventh  months  child.  He  was 
born  on  the  29th  of  October,  1795.*  He  had  two  brothers,  George, 
older  than  himself,  Thomas,  younger,  and  a  sister  much  younger ; 
John  resembled  his  father  in  feature,  stature,  and  manners,  while 
the  two  brothers  were  more  like  their  mother,  who  was  tall,  had  a 
large  oval  face,  and  a  somewhat  saturnine  demeanor.  She  suc- 
ceeded, however,  in  inspiring  her  children  with  the  profoundest 
affection,  and  especially  John,  who,  when,  on  an  occasion  of  ill- 
ness, the  doctor  ordered  her  not  to  be  disturbed  for  some  time, 
kept  sentinel  at  her  door  for  above  three  hours  with  an  old  sword 
he  had  picked  up,  and  allowed  no  one  to  enter  the  room.  At  this 
time  he  was  between  four  and  five  years  old,  and  later  he  was 
sent,  with  his  brothers,  to  Mr.  Clarke's  school  at  Enfield,  which 
was  then  in  high  repute.  Harrow  had  been  at  first  proposed,  but 
was  found  to  be  too  expensive. 

A  maternal  uncle  of  the  young  Keats's  had  been  an  officer  in 
Duncan's  ship  in  the  action  off  Camperdown,  and  had  distinguish- 
ed himself  there  both  by  his  signal  bravery  and  by  his  peculiarly 
lofty  stature,  which  made  him  a  mark  for  the  enemy's  shot ;  the 
Dutch  admiral  said  as  much  to  him  after  the  battle.  This  sailor- 
uncle  was  the  ideal  of  the  boys,  and  filled  their  imagination  when 
they  went  to  school  with  the  notion  of  keeping  up  the  family's  re- 
putation for  courage.  This  was  manifested  in  the  elder  brother 
by  a  passive  manliness,  but  in  John  and  Tom  by  the  fiercest  pug- 
nacity. John  was  always  fighting ;  he  chose  his  favorites 
among  his  schoolfellows   from  those  that  fought  the  most  readily 


*  This  point,  which  has  been  disputed,  (Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  making  him  a 
year  younger,)  is  decided  by  the  proceedings  in  Chancery,  on  ihe  administration 
of  his  effects,  where  he  is  said  to  have  come  of  age  in  October,  1816.  Raw- 
lings  V.  Jennings,  June  3d,  182.T. 


16  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

and  pertinaciously,  nor  were  the  brothers  loth  to  exerci.se  their 
mettle  even  on  one  anotlier.  Tliis  disposition,  however,  in  all  of 
them,  seems  to  have  been  combined  with  much  tenderness,  and, 
in  John,  with  a  passionate  sensibility,  which  exhibited  itself  in  the 
strongest  contrasts.  Convulsions  of  laughter  and  of  tears  were 
equally  frequent  with  him,  and  he  would  pass  from  one  to  the 
other  almost  without  an  interval.  He  gave  vent  to  his  impulses 
with  no  I'egard  for  consequences ;  he  violently  attacked  an  usher 
who  had  boxed  his  brother's  ears,  and  on  the  occasion  of  his  mo- 
ther's death,  which  occurred  suddenly,  in  1810,  (thougli  she  had 
lingered  for  some  years  in  a  consumption,)  he  hid  himself  in  a 
nook  under  the  master's  desk  for  several  days,  in  a  long  agony  of 
grief,  and  would  take  no  consolation  from  master  or  from  friend. 
The  sense  of  humor,  which  almost  universally  accompanies  a 
deep  sensil)ility,  and  is  perhaps  but  the  reverse  of  the  medal, 
abounded  in  him  ;  from  the  first,  he  took  infinite  delight  in  any  gro- 
tesque originality  or  novel  prank  of  his  companions,  and,  after  the 
exhibition  of  physical  courage,  appeared  to  prize  these  above  all 
other  qualifications.  His  indifference  to  be  thought  well  of  as 
"a  good  boy,"  was  as  remarkable  as  his  facility  in  getting  through 
the  daily  tasks  of  the  school,  which  never  seemed  to  occupy  his 
attention,  but  in  which  he  was  never  behind  the  others.  His  skill 
in  all  manly  exercises  and  the  perfect  generosity  of  his  disposition, 
made  him  extremely  popular :  "  he  combined,"  writes  one  of  his 
schoolfellows,  "  a  terrier-like  resoluteness  of  character,  with  the 
most  noble  placability,"  and  another  mentions  that  his  extraordi- 
nary energy,  animation,  and  ability,  impressed  them  all  with  a 
conviction  of  his  future  greatness,  "  but  ratiicr  in  a  military  or 
some  such  active  sphere  of  life,  than  in  the  peaceful  arena  of 
literature."*  This  impression  was  no  doubt  unconsciously  aid- 
ed by  a  rare  vivacity  of  countenance  and  very  beautiful  fea- 
tures. His  eyes,  then,  as  ever,  were  large  and  sensitive,  flash- 
ing with  strong  emotions  or  sufTused  with  tender  sympathies, 
and  more  distinctly  reflected  the  varying  impulses  of  his  nature 
than  when  under  the  self-control  of  maturer  years  :  his  hair  hung 

*  Mr.  E.  Holmef?,  author  of  the  "  Life  of  Mozart,"  &c. 


JOHN  KEATS.  17 


in  fliick  brown  rintjlots  round  a  head  diminutive  for  the  breadth 
of  the  shoulders  below  it,  while  the  smallness  of  the  lower  limbs, 
which  in  later  life  marred  the  proportion  of  his  person,  was  not 
then  apparent,  any  more  than  the  undue  prominence  of  the  lower 
lip,  which  afterwards  gave  his  face  too  pugnacious  a  character  to 
be  entirely  pleasing,  but  at  that  time  only  completed  such  an  im- 
pression as  the  ancients  had  of  Achilles, — ^joyous  and  glorious 
youth,  everlastingly  striving. 

After  remaining  some  time  at  school  his  intellectual  ambition 
suddenly  developed  itself:  he  determined  to  carry  off  all  the  first 
prizes  in  literature,  and  he  succeeded  :  but  the  object  was  only 
obtained  by  a  total  sacrifice  of  his  amusements  and  favorite  exer- 
cises. Even  on  the  half-holidays,  when  the  school  was  all  out  at 
play,  he  remained  at  home  translating  his  Virgil  or  his  Fenelon  : 
it  has  frequently  occurred  to  the  master  to  force  him  out  into  the 
open  air  for  his  health,  and  then  he  would  walk  in  the  garden 
with  a  book  in  his  hand.  The  quantity  of  translations  on 
paper  he  made  during  the  last  two  yeai's  of  his  stay  at  Enfield 
was  surprising.  The  twelve  books  of  the  "  ^Eneid"  were  a  por- 
tion of  it,  but  he  does  not  appear  to  have  been  familiar  with  much 
other  and  more  difficult  Latin  poetry,  nor  to  have  even  com- 
menced learning  the  Greek  language.  Yet  Tooke's  "  Pantheon," 
Spence's  "  Polymetis,"  and  Lempriere's  "  Dictionary,"  were 
sufficient  fully  to  introduce  his  imagination  to  the  enchanted 
world  of  old  mythology  ;  with  this,  at  once,  he  became  intimately 
acquainted,  and  a  natural  consanguinity,  so  to  say,  of  intellect, 
soon  domesticated  him  with  the  ancient  ideal  life,  so  that  his 
scanty  scholarship  supplied  him  with  a  clear  perception  of  clas- 
sic beauty,  and  led  the  way  to  that  wonderful  reconstruction  of 
Grecian  feeling  and  fancy,  of  which  his  mind  became  afterwards 
capable.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  sedulous  reader  of 
other  books,  but  "  Robinson  Crusoe"  and  Marmontel's  "  Incas  of 
Peru"  impressed  him  strongly,  and  he  must  have  met  with  Shak- 
speare,  for  he  told  a  schoolfellow  considerably  younger  than  him- 
self, "  that  he  thought  no  one  could  dare  to  read  '  Macbeth'  alone 
in  a  house,  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning." 

On  the  death  of  their  remaining  parent,  the  young  Keats's 


18  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

were  consigned  to  the  guardianship  of  Mr.  Abbey,  a  merchant. 
About  eight  thousand  pounds  were  left  to  be  equally  divided 
among  the  four  children.  It  does  not  appear  whether  the  wishes 
of  John,  as  to  his  destination  in  life,  were  at  all  consulted  ;  but, 
on  leaving  school,  in  the  summer  of  1810,  he  was  apprenticed,  for 
five  years,  to  Mr.  Hammond,  a  surgeon  of  some  eminence  at  Ed- 
monton. The  vicinity  to  Enfield  enabled  him  to  keep  up  his 
connection  with  the  family  of  Mr.  Clarke,  where  he  was  always 
received  with  familiar  kindness.  His  talents  and  energy  had 
strongly  recommended  him  to  his  preceptor,  and  his  affectionate 
disposition  endeared  him  to  his  son.  In  Charles  Cowden  Clarke, 
Keats  found  a  friend  capable  of  sympathizing  witl>  all  his  highest 
tastes  and  finest  sentiments,  and  in  this  genial  atmosphere  his 
powers  gradually  expanded.  He  was  always  borrowing  books,' 
which  he  devoured  rather  than  read.  Yet  so  little  expectation 
was  formed  of  the  direction  his  ability  would  take,  that  when,  in 
the  beginning  of  1812,  he  asked  for  the  loan  of  Spenser's  "  Fairy 
Queen,"  Mr.  Clarke  remembers  that  it  was  supposed  in  the  family 
that  he  merely  desired,  from  a  boyish  ambition,  to  study  an  illus- 
trious production  of  literature.  The  effect,  however,  produced  on 
him  by  that  great  work  of  ideality  was  electrical :  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  walking  over  to  Enfield  at  least  once  a  week,  to  talk  over 
his  reading  with  his  friend,  and  he  would  now  speak -of  nothing 
but  Spenser.  A  new  world  of  delight  seemed  revealed  to  him  : 
"he  ramped  through  the  scenes  of  the  romance,"  writes  Mr. 
Clarke,  "  like  a  young  horse  turned  into  a  spring  meadow  :"  he 
reveled  in  the  gorgeousness  of  the  imagery,  as  in  the  pleasures 
of  a  sense  fresh-found:  the  force  and  felicity  of  an  epithet  (such, 
for  example,  as — "the  sea-shouldering  whale")  would  light  up 
his  countenance  with  ecstacy,  and  some  fine  touch  of  description 
would  seem  to  strike  on  the  secret  chords  of  his  soul  and  generate 
countless  harmonies.  This,  in  fact,  was  not  only  his  open  pre- 
sentation at  the  Court  of  the  Muses,  (for  the  lines  in  imitation  of 
Spenser, 


Now  Morning  from  her  Oriont  chamber  came, 
And  her  first  footsteps  touched  a  verdant  hill,"  &c., 


JOHN  KEATS.  19 


are  the  earliest  known  verses  of  his  composition,)  but  it  was  the 
great  impulse  of  his  poetic  life,  and  tlie  stream  of  his  inspiration 
remained  long  colored  by  the  rich  soil  over  whicii  it  first  had 
flowed.  Nor  will  the  just  critic  of  the  maturer  poems  of  Keats 
fail  to  trace  to  the  influence  of  the  study  of  Spenser  much  that  at 
first  appears  forced  and  fantastical  both  in  idea  and  in  expression, 
and  discover  that  precisely  those  defects  which  are  commonly  at- 
tributed to  an  extravagant  originality  may  be  distinguished  as  pro- 
ceeding from  a  too  indiscriminate  reverence  for  a  great  but  un- 
equal model.  In  the  scanty  records  which  are  left  of  the  adoles- 
cent years  in  which  Keats  became  a  poet,  a  Sonnet  on  Spenser, 
the  date  of  which  I  have  not  been  able  to  trace,  itself  illustrates 
this  view : — 


"  Spenser  !  a  jealous  honorer  of  thine, 
A  forester  deep  in  thy  midmost  trees, 
Did,  last  eve,  ask  my  promise  to  refine 
Some  English,  that  might  strive  thine  ear  to  please. 
But,  Elfin-poet  !  'tis  impossible 
For  an  inhabitant  of  wintry  earth 
To  rise,  like  Phcsbus,  with  a  golden  quill. 
Fire-winged,  and  make  a  morning  in  his  mirth. 
It  is  impossible  to  'scape  from  toil 
O'  the  sudden,  and  receive  thy  spiriting: 
The  flower  must  drink  the  nature  of  the  soii 
Before  it  can  put  forth  its  blossoming : 
Be  with  me  in  the  summer  days,  and  I 
Will  for  thine  honor  and  his  pleasure  try." 


A  few  memorials  remain  of  his  other  studies.  Chaucer  evi- 
dently gave  him  the  greatest  pleasure  :  he  afterwards  complained 
of  the  diction  as  "  annoyingly  mixed  up  with  Gallicisms,"  but 
at  the  time  when  he  wrote  the  Sonnet,  at  the  end  of  the  tale  of 
"The  Flower  and  the  Leaf,"  he  felt  nothing  but  the  pure  breath 
of  nature  in  the  morning  of  English  literature.  His  friend  Clarke, 
tired  with  a  long  walk,  had  fallen  asleep  on  the  sofa  with  a  book 
in  his  hand,  and  when  he  woke,  the  volume  was  enriched  with 
this  addition, 


20  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

"  This  pleasant  tale  is  like  a  little  copse  :"  &c.* 

The  strange  tragedy  of  the  fate  of  Chatterton,  "the  marvelous 
Boy,  the  sleepless  soul  that  perished  in  its  pride,"  so  disgraceful 
to  the  age  in  which  it  occurred,  and  so  awful  a  warning  to  all 
others  of  the  cruel  evils  which  the  mere  apathy  and  ignorance  of 
the  world  can  inflict  on  genius,  is  a  frequent  subject  of  allusion 
and  interest  fn  Keats's  letters  and  poems,  and  some  lines  of  the 
following  invocation  bear  a  mournful  anticipatory  analogy  to  the 
close  of  the  beautiful  elegy  which  Shelley  hung  over  another 
early  grave. 

"  O  Chatterton  !  how  very  sad  thy  fate  ! 
Dear  child  of  sorrow — son  of  misery  ! 
How  soon  the  film  of  death  obscured  that  eye 
Whence  Genius  mildly  flasjied,  and  high  debate. 
How  soon  that  voice,  majestic  and  elate, 
Melted  in  dying  numbers  !     Oh  1  how  nigh 
Was  night  to  thy  fdir  morning      Thou  didst  die 
A  half-blown  flow'ret  which  cold  blasts  amate.t 
But  this  is  past :  thou  art  among  the  stars 
Of  highest  Heaven  :   to  the  rolling  spheres 
Thou  sweetly  singest ;  nought  thy  hymning  mars. 
Above  the  ingraie  world  and  human  fears. 
On  earth  the  good  man  base  detraction  bars 
From  thy  fair  name,  and  waters  it  with  tears." 

Not  long  before  this,  Keats  had  become  familiar  with  the 
works  of  Lord  Byron,  and  indited  a  Sonnet,  of  little  merit,  to  him 
hi  December,  1814  : — 

"  Byron !  how  sweetly  sad  thy  melody ! 
Attuning  still  the  soul  to  tenderness. 
As  if  soft  Piiy,  with  unusual  stress, 
Had  touched  her  plaintive  lute,  and  thou,  being  by, 
Hadst  caught  the  tones,  nor  suffered  them  to  die. 
O'ershading  sorrow  doth  not  mnke  thee  less 
Delightful :   thou  thy  griefs  dost  dress 
With  a  bright  halo,  shining  beamily, 

*  See  the  "  Literary  Remains." 
t  Amate. — Affright.     Chaucer. 


JOHN  KEATS.  21 


As  when  a  cloud  the  golden  moon  doth  veil. 
Its  sides  are  tinged  with  a  resplendent  glow, 
Through  the  dark  robe  oft  amber  rays  prevail. 
And  like  fair  veins  in  sable  marble  flow  ; 
Still  warble,  dying  swan  !  still  tell  the  tale, 
The  enchanting  tale,  the  tale  of  pleasing  woe." 

Confused  as  are  the  imagery  and  diction  of  these  lines,  their  feel- 
ing suggests  a  painful  contrast  with  the  harsh  judgment  and  late 
remorse  of  their  object,  the  proud  and  successful  poet,  who  never 
heard  of  this  imperfect  utterance  of  boyish  sympathy  and  respect. 

The  impressible  nature  of  Keats  would  naturally  incline  him 
to  erotic  composition,  but  his  early  love-verses  are  remarkably 
deficient  in  beauty  and  even  in  passion.  Some  which  remain  in 
manuscript  are  without  any  interest,  and  those  published  in  the 
little  volume  of  1817,  are  the  worst  pieces  in  it.  The  world  of  per- 
sonal emotion  was  then  far  less  familiar  to  him  than  that  of  fancy, 
and  indeed  it  seems  to  have  been  long  before  he  descended  from 
the  ideal  atmosphere  in  which  he  dwelt  so  happily,  into  the  trou- 
bled realities  of  human  love.  Not,  however,  that  the  creatures 
even  of  his  young  imagination  were  unimbued  with  natural  affec- 
tions ;  so  far  from  it,  it  may  be  reasonably  conjectured  that  it  was 
the  interfusion  of  ideal  and  sensual  life  which  rendered  the 
Grecian  mythology  so  peculiarly  congenial  to  the  mind  of  Keats, 
and  when  the  '•'  Endymion"  comes  to  be  critically  considered,  it 
will  be  found  that  its  excellence  consists  in  its  clear  comprehen- 
sion of  that  ancient  spirit  of  beauty,  to  which  all  outward  percep- 
tions so  excellently  ministered,  and  which  undertook  to  ennoble 
and  purify,  as  far  as  was  consistent  with  their  retention,  tlic  in- 
stinctive desires  of  mankind. 

Friendship,  generally  ardent  in  youth,  would  not  remain  with- 
out its  impression  in  the  early  poems  of  Keats,  and  a  congeniality 
of  literary  dispositions  appears  to  have  been  the  chief  impulse  to 
these  relations.  With  Mr.  Felton  Mathew,*  to  whom  his  first 
published  Epistle  was  addressed,  he  appears  to  have  enjoyed  a 

*  A  gentleman  of  high  literary  merit,  now  employed  in  the  administration 
ol  the  Poor  Law. 

2* 


22  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

high  intellectual  sympathy.  Tliis  friend  had  introduced  him  to 
agreeable  society,  both  of  books  and  men,  and  tliose  verses  were 
written  just  at  the  time  when  Keats  became  fully  aware  that  he 
had  no  real  interest  in  the  profession  he  was  sedulously  pursuing, 
and  was  already  in  the  midst  of  that  sad  conflict  between  the 
outer  find  tlie  inner  worlds,  which  is  too  often,  perhaps  always  in 
some  degree,  the  Poet's  heritage  in  life.  That  freedom  from  the 
bonds  of  conventional  phraseology  which  so  clearly  designates 
true  genius,  but  which,  if  unwatched  and  unchastened,  will  con- 
tinually outrage  the  perfect  form  that  can  alone  embalm  the  beau- 
tiful idea  and  preserve  it  for  ever,  is  there  already  manifest,  and 
the  presence  of  Spenser  shows  itself  not  only  by  quaint  expres- 
sions and  curious  adaptations  of  rhyme,  but  by  the  introduction 
of  the  words  "  and  make  a  sun-shine  in  a  shady  place,"  applied 
to  the  power  of -the  Muse.  Mr.  Mathew  retains  las  impression 
that  at  that  time  "  the  eye  of  Keats  was  more  critical  than  tender, 
and  so  was  his  mind :  he  admired  more  the  external  decorations 
than  felt  the  deep  emotions  of  the  Muse.  He  delighted  in  leading 
you  through  the  mazes  of  elaborate  description,  but  was  less  con- 
scious of  the  sublime  and  the  pathetic.  He  used  to  spend  many 
evenings  in  reading  to  me,  but  I  never  observed  the  tears  in  his 
eyes  nor  the  broken  voice  which  are  indicative  of  extreme  sensi- 
bility." The  modification  of  a  nature  at  first  passionately  sus- 
ceptible and  the  growing  preponderance  of  the  imagination  is  a 
frequent  phenomenon  in  poetical  psychology. 

To  his  brother  George,  then  a  clerk  in  Mr.  Abbey's  house, 
his  next  Epistle  is  addressed,  and  Spenser  is  there  too.  But  by 
this  time  the  delightful  complacency  of  conscious  genius  had  al- 
ready dawned  upon  his  mind  and  gives  the  poem  an  especial 
interest.  After  a  brilliant  sketch  of  the  present  happiness  of  the 
poet,  "  his  proud  eye  looks  through  the  film  of  death  ;"  he  thinks 
of  leaving  behind  him  lays 

"  of  such  a  dear  delight. 
That  maids  will  sing  them  on  their  bridal  night  ; 

he  foresees  that  the  patriot  will  thunder  out  his  numbers, 


JOHN  KEATS.  23 


"  To  startle  princes  from  their  easy  slumbers  ;" 

and  while  he  checks  hiinself  in  what  he  calls  "  this  mad  ambi- 
lion,"  yet  he  owns  he  has  felt 

"  relief  from  pain. 
When  some  bright  thought  has  darted  through  my  brain — 
Through  all  the  day,  I've  felt  a  greater  pleasure 
Than  if  I'd  brought  to  light  a  hidden  treasure." 

Although  this  foretaste  of  fame  is  in  most  cases  a  delusion,  (as  the 
fame  itself  may  be  a  greater  delusion  still,)  yet  it  is  the  best  and 
purest  drop  in  the  cup  of  intellectual  ambition.  It  is  enjoyed, 
thank  God,  by  thousands,  who  soon  learn  to  estimate  their  own 
capacities  aright  and  tranquilly  submit  to  the  obscure  and  transi- 
tory condition  of  their  existence  :  it  is  felt  by  many,  who  look 
back  on  it  in  after  years  with  a  smiling  pity  to  think  they  were 
so  deceived,  but  who  nevertheless  recognize  in  that  aspiration  the 
spring  of  their  futui'e  energies  and  usefulness  in  other  and  far  dif- 
ferent fields  of  action ;  and  the  few,  iu  whom  the  prophecy  is  ac- 
complished— who  become  what  they  have  believed — will  often  turn 
away  with  uneasy  satiety  from  present  satisfaction  to  the  memory 
of  those  happy  hopes,  to  the  thought  of  ihe  dear  delight  they  then 
derived  from  one  single  leaf  of  those  laurels  that  now  crowd  in  at 
the  window,  and  which  the  hand  is  half  inclined  to  push  away  to 
let  in  the  fresh  air  of  heaven. 

TJie  lines 

"  As  to  my  Sonnets — though  none  else  should  heed  them, 
I  feel  delighted  still  that  you  should  read  them," 

occur  in  this  Epistle,  and  several  of  these  have  been  preserved 
besides  those  published  or  already  mentioned.  Some,  indeed, 
are  mere  experiments  in  this  difficult  but  attractive  form  of  com- 
position, and  others  evidently  refer  to  forgotten  details  of  daily 
life  and  are  unmeaning  without  them.  A  few  of  unequal  power 
and  illustrative  of  the  progress  of  genius  should  not  be  forgotten, 
while  those  contained  in  the  first  volume  of  his  Poems  are  per- 
haps the  most  remarkable  pieces  in  it.     They  are  as  noble  in 


24  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


thought,  rich  in  expression,  and  harmonious  in  rhythm  as  any  in 
the  language,  and  among  the  best  may  bo  ranked  that  "  On  first 
looking  into  Chapman's  Homer."  Unable  as  he  was  to  read  the 
original  Greek,  Homer  had  as  yet  been  to  him  a  name  of  solemn 
significance,  and  nothing  more.  His  friend  and  literary  counsel- 
or, Mr.  Clarke,  happened  to  borrow  Chapman's  translation,  and 
having  invited  Keats  to  read  it  with  him  one  evening,  they  con- 
tinued their  study  till  daylight.  He  describes  Keats's  delight  as 
intense,  even  to  shouting  aloud,  as  some  passage  of  especial  energy 
struck  his  imagination.  It  was  fortunate  that  he  was  introduced 
to  that  heroic  company  through  an  interpretation  which  preserves 
so  much  of  the  ancient  simplicity,  and  in  a  metre  that,  after  all 
various  attempts,  including  that  of  the  hexameter,  still  appears 
the  best  adapted,  from  its  pauses  and  its  length,  to  represent  in 
English  the  Greek  epic  verse.  An  accomplished  scholar  may 
perhaps  be  unwilling,  or  unable,  to  understand  how  thoroughly 
the  imaginative  reader  can  fill  up  the  necessary  defects  of  any 
translation  which  adheres,  as  far  as  it  may,  to  the  tone  and  spirit 
of  the  original,  and  does  not  introduce  fresh  elements  of  thought, 
incongruous  ornaments,  or  cumbrous  additions  ;  be  it  bald  and 
tame,  he  can  clothe  and  color  it — be  it  harsh  and  ill-jointed,  he 
can  perceive  the  smoothness  and  completeness  that  has  been  lost ; 
only  let  it  not  be  like  Pope's  Homer,  a  new  work  with  an  old 
name — a  portrait,  itself  of  considerable  power  and  beauty,  but  in 
which  the  features  of  the  individual  are  scarcely  to  be  recoo-nized. 
The  Sonnet  in  which  these  his  first  impressions  are  concentrated, 
was  left  the  following  day  on  Mr.  Clarke's  table,  realizing  the 
idea  of  that  form  of  verse  expressed  by  Keats  himself  in  his  third 
Epistle,  as — 

"  swelling  loudly 
Up  to  its  climax,  and  then  dying  proudly." 

This  Epistle  is  written  in  a  bolder  and  freer  sti-ain  than  the 
others  ;  the  Poet  in  excusing  himself  for  not  having  addressed 
his  Muse  to  Mr.  Clarke  before,  on  account  of  his  inferiority  to.  the 
great  masters  of  song,  implies  that  he  is  growing  conscious  of  a 
possible  brotherhood  with  them  ;  and  his  terse  and  true  descrip. 


JOHN  KEATS.    .  25 


tion  of  tlie  various  orders  of  verse,  with  which   his  friend  has 
familiarized  his  mind — the  Sonnet,  as  above  cited — the  Ode, 

"  Growing,  like  Atlas,  stronger  from  its  load," 


the  Epic, 


and  last, 


"  of  all  the  king, 
Round,  vast,  and  spanning  all,  like  Saturn's  ring," 


"  The  sharp,  the  rapier-pointed  Epigram, — " 


betokens  the  justness  of  perception  generally  allied  with  redun- 
dant fancy. 

These  notices  have  anticipated  the  period  of  the  termination 
of  Keats's  apprenticeship  and  his  removal  to  London,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  walking  the  hospitals.  He  lodged  in  the  Poultry,  and 
having  been  introduced  by  Mr.  Clarke  to  some  literary  friends 
soon  found  himself  in  a  circle  of  minds  which  appreciated  his 
genius  and  stimulated  him  to  exertion.  One  of  his  first  acquaint- 
ance, at  that  time  eminent  for  his  poetical  originality  and  his  poli- 
tical persecutions,  was  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt,  who  was  regarded  by 
some  with  admiration,  by  others  with  ridicule,  as  the  master  of  a 
school  of  poets,  though  in  truth  he  was  only  their  encouragcr, 
sympathizer,  and  friend  ;  while  the  unpopularity  of  his  liberal 
and  cosmopolite  politics  was  visited  with  indiscriminating  injustice 
on  all  who  had  the  happiness  of  his  friendship  or  even  the  gratifi- 
cation of  his  society.  In  those  days  of  hard  opinion,  which  we 
of  a  freer  and  worthier  time  look  upon  with  indignation  and  sur- 
prise, Mr.  Hunt  had  been  imprisoned  for  the  publication  of  phrases 
which,  at  the  most,  were  indecorous  expressions  of  public  feeling, 
and  became  a  traitor  or  a  martyr  according  to  the  temper  of  the 
spectator.  The  heart  of  Keats  leaped  towards  him  in  human  and 
poetic  brotherhood,  and  the  earnest  Sonnet  on  the  day  he  left 
his  prison  riveted  the  connection.  They  had  read  and  walked 
together,  and  wrote  verses  in  competition  on  a  given  subject. 
"  No  imaginative  pleasure,"  characteristically  observes  Mr.  Hunt, 
"  was  left  unnoticed  by  us  or  unenjoyed,  from  the  recollection  of 
the  bards  and  patriots  of  old,  to  the  luxury  of  a  summer  rain  at 


26  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

our  windows,  or  the  clicking  of  the  coal  in  winter  time."  Thus 
he  became  intimate  with  Hazlitt,  Shelley,  Haydon,  and  Godwin, 
with  Mr.  Basil  Montague  and  his  distinguished  family,  and  with 
Mr.  Oilier,  a  young  publisher,  himself  a  poet,  Avho,  out  of  sheer 
admiration,  offered  to  publish  a  volume  of  his  productions.  The 
poem  with  which  it  commences  was  suggested  to  Keats  by  a  de- 
lightful summer's-day,  as  he  stood  beside  the  gate  that  leads  from 
the  Battery,  on  Hampstead  Heath,  into  a  field  by  Caen  Wood ; 
and  the  last,  "  Sleep  and  Poetry,"  was  occasioned  by  his  sleeping 
in  Mr.  Hunt's  pretty  cottage,  in  the  vale  of  Health,  in  the  same 
quarter.  These  two  pieces,  being  of  considerable  length,  tested 
the  strength  of  the  young  poet's  fancy,  and  it  did  not  fail.  For 
the  masters  of  song  will  not  only  rise  lark-like  with  quivering 
wings  in  the  sunlight,  but  must  train  their  powers  to  sustain  a 
calm  and  protracted  flight,  and  pass,  as  if  poised  in  air,  over  the 
heads  of  mankind.  Yet  it  was  to  be  expected  that  the  apparent 
faults  of  Keats's  style  would  be  here  more  manifest  than  in  his 
shorter  efforts ;  poetry  to  him  was  not  yet  an  Art ;  the  irregu- 
larities of  his  own  and  other  verse  were  no  more  to  him  than  the 
inequalities  of  that  nature,  of  which  he  regarded  himself  as  the 
interpreter  : 

"  For  what  has  made  the  sage  or  poet  write, 
But  the  fair  paradise  of  Nature's  light? 
In  the  calm  grandeur  of  a  sober  line 
We  see  the  waving  of  the  mountain  pine. 
And  when  a  tale  is  beautifully  staid. 
We  feel  the  safety  of  a  hawthorn  glade." 

He  had  yet  to  learn  that  Art  should  purify  and  elevate  the 
Nature  that  it  comprehends,  and  that  the  ideal  loses  nothing  of 
its  truth  by  aiming  at  perfection  of  form  as  well  as  of  idea. 
Neither  did  he  like  to  regard  poetry  as  a  matter  of  study  and 
anxiety,  or  as  a  representative  of  the  struggles  and  troubles  of 
the  mind  and  heart  of  men.     He  said  most  exquisitely,  that — 

"  a  drainless  shower 
Of  light  is  Poesy — 'tis  the  supreme  of  power  ; 
'Tie  Might  half-slumbering  on  its  own  right  arm." 


JOHN  KEATS.  27 


He  thought  that — 

"  strength  alone,  thougli  of  the  ]\Iuses  born, 
Is  like  a  fallen  angel — trees  uptorn, 
Darkness  and  worms  and  shrouds  and  sepulchres 
Delight  it — for  it  feeds  upon  the  burrs 
And  thorns  of  life,  forgetting  the  great  end 
Of  Poesy,  that  it  should  be  a  friend 
To  soothe  the  cares  and  lift  the  thoughts  of  men." 

And  yet  Keats  did  not  escape  the  charge  of  sacrificing  beauty  to 
supposed  intensity,  and  of  merging  the  abiding  grace  of  his  song 
in  the  passionate  fantasies  of  the  moment.  Words  indeed  seem 
to  have  been  often  selected  by  him  rather  for  their  force  and 
their  harmony,  than  according  to  any  just  rules  of  diction  ;  if 
he  met  with  a  word  any  where  in  an  old  writer  that  took  his  fan- 
cy he  inserted  it  in  his  verse  on  the  first  opportunity  ;  and  one 
lias  a  kind  of  impression  that  he  inust  have  thought  aloud  as  he 
was  writing,  so  that  many  an  ungainly  phrase  has  acquired  its 
place  by  its  assonance  or  harmony,  or  capability  to  rhyme,  (for 
he  took  great  pleasure  in  fresh  and  original  rhymes,)  rather  than 
for  its  grammatical  correctness  or  even  justness  of  expression. 
And  when  to  this  is  added  the  example  set  him  by  his  great  mas- 
ter Spenser,  of  whom  a  noted  man  of  letters  has  been  heard  irrev- 
erently to  assert  "  that  every  Englishman  might  be  thankful  that 
Spenser's  gibberish  had  never  become  part  and  parcel  of  the 
language,"  the  wonder  is  rather  that  he  sloughed  ofT  so  many  of 
his  offending  peculiarities,  and  in  his  third  volume  attained  so 
great  a  purity  and  concinnity  of  phraseology,  that  little  was  left 
to  designate  either  his  poetical  education  or  his  literary  associates. 
At  the  completion  of  the  matter  for  this  first  volume  he  gave 
a  striking  proof  of  his  facility  in  composition  ;  he  was  engaged 
with  a  lively  circle  of  friends  when  the  last  proof-sheet  was 
brought  in,  and  he  was  requested  by  the  printer  to  send  the  Ded- 
ication directly,  if  he  intended  to  have  one :  he  went  to  a  side- 
table,  and  while  all  around  were  noisily  conversing,  he  sat  down 
and  wrote  the  sonnet — 

"  Glory  and  loveliness  have  passed  away,"  &c.  &c. 


28  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

whicli,  but  for  the  insertion  of  one  epithet  of  doubtful  taste,  is  ex- 
cellcnt  in  itself,  and  curious,  as  showing  how  he  had  already  pos- 
sessed himself  of  the  images  of  Pagan  beauty,  and  was  either 
mourning  over  their  decay  and  extinction,  or  attempting,  in  his 
own  way,  to  bid  them  live  again.  For  in  him  was  realized  the 
media;val  legend  of  the  Venus-worshiper,  without  its  melancholy 
moral .;  and  while  the  old  gods  rewarded  him  for  his  love  with 
powers  and  perceptions  that  a  Greek  might  have  envied,  he  kept 
his  affections  high  and  pure  above  these  sensuous  influences,  and 
led  a  temperate  and  honest  life  in  an  ideal  world  that  knows  no- 
thing of  duty  and  repels  all  images  that  do  not  please. 

This  little  book,  the  beloved  first-born  of  so  great  a  genius, 
scarcely  touched  the  public  attention.  If,  indeed,  it  had  become 
notable,  it  would  only  have  been  to  the  literary  formalist  the  sign 
of  the  existence  of  a  new  Cockney  poet  whom  he  was  bound  to 
criticise  and  annihilate,  and  to  the  political  bigot  the  production 
of  a  fresh  member  of  a  revolutionary  Propaganda  to  be  hunted 
down  with  ridicule  or  obloquy,  as  the  case  might  require.  But 
these  honors  were  reserved  for  maturer  labors ;  beyond  the 
circle  of  ardent  friends  and  admirers,  which  comprised  most 
of  the  most  remarkable  minds  of  the  period,  it  had  hardly  a 
purchaser ;  and  the  contrast  between  the  admiration  he  had, 
perhaps  in  excess,  enjoyed  among  his  immediate  acquaintance, 
and  the  entire  apathy  of  mankind  without,  must  have  been  a 
hard  lesson  to  his  sensitive  spirit.  It  is  not  surprising  therefore, 
that  he  attributed  his  want  of  success  to  the  favorite  scape-goat 
of  unhappy  authors,  an  inactive  publisher,  and  incurred  the  addi- 
tional aflliction  of  a  breach  of  his  friendship  with  Mr.  Oilier. 

Mr.  Haydon,  Mr.  Dilkc,  Mr.  Reynolds,  Mr.  Woodhouse,  Mr. 
Rice,  Mr.  Taylor,  Mr.  Hessey,  Mr.  Bailey,  and  Mr.  Haslam, 
were  his  chief  companions  and  correspondents  at  this  period. 
The  first  name  of  this  list  now  excites  the  mo.st  painful  associa- 
tions :  it  recalls  a  life  of  long  struggle  without  a  prize,  of  perse- 
vering hope  stranded  on  despair  ;  high  talents  laboriously  applied 
earning  the  same  catastrophe  as  waits  on  abilities  vainly  wasted  ; 
frugality,  self-denial,  and  sin)ple  habits,  leading  to  the  penalties 
of  profligacy  and  the  death  of  distraction  ;  an  independent  genius 


JOHN  KEATS.  29 


starving  on  the  crumbs  of  un^puial  patronage,  anH  evrn  these  fail- 
ing him  at  the  la^^t  !  It  might  be  tlmt  Flaydon  did  not  so  realize 
his  conceptions  as  to  make  thrm  to  other  men  m  hat  they  were  to 
himself;  it  might  be  that  hoover-estimated  his  own  testhetic  pow- 
ers, and  underrated  those  provinces  of  art  in  which  some  of  his 
contemporaries  excelled  ;  but  surely  a  man  should  not  have  been 
so  left  to  perish,  whose  passion  for  lofty  art,  notwithstanding  all 
discouragements,  must  have  made  him  dear  to  artists,  and  whose 
capabilities  were  such  as  in  any  other  country  would  have  assured 
him  at  least  competence  and  reputation — perhaps  wealth  and 
fame. 

But  at  this  time  the  destiny  of  Haydon  seemed  to  be  spread 
out  very  differently  before  him  ;  if  ever  stern  presentiments  came 
across  his  soul,  Art  and  Youth  had  then  colors  bright  enough  to 
chase  them  all  away.  His  society  seems  to  liave  been  both  agree- 
able and  instructive  to  Keats.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  what  a  rev- 
elation of  greatness  the  Elgin  Marbles  must  have  been  to  the 
young  poet's  mind,  when  he  saw  them  for  the  first  time,  in  March, 
1817.  The  following  Sonnets  on  t!ie  occasion  were  written  di- 
rectly after,  and  published  in  the  "  Examiner."  With  more 
polish  they  might  have  been  worthy  of  the  theme,  but  as  it  is,  the 
diction,  of  the  first  especially,  is  obscure  though  vigorous,  and  the 
thought  does  not  come  out  in  the  clear  unity  becoming  the  Sonnet, 
and  attained  by  Keats  so  successfully  on  many  other  subjects  : — 


ON  SEEIXG  THE  ELGIN  MARBLES. 

My  spirit  is  too  wenk  ;  mortality 
Weighs  iieavily  on  me  like  unwilling  sleep, 
And  eacii  imagined  piniiaclis  and  steep 
Of  godlike  hardship  tells  ine  I  must  die 
Like  a  sick  eagle  looking  at  the  sky. 
Yet  'tis  a  gentle  luxury  to  weep, 
That  I  have  not  the  cloudy  winds  to  keep 
Fresh  for  the  opening  of  the  morning's  eye. 
Such  dim-conceived  gluries  of  the  brain, 
Bring  round  the  heart  an  indescribable  feud 
So  do  these  wonders  a  most  dizzy  pain. 


30  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

That  mingles  Grecian  grandeur  with  the  rude 
Wasting  of  old  Time — with  a  billowy  main 
A  sun,  a  shadow  of  a  magnitude. 

The  image  of  the  "  Eagle  "  is  beautiful  in  itself,  and  interest- 
ing in  its  application. 

TO  HAYDON. 

(with  the  above.) 

Haydon  !  forgive  me  that  I  cannot  speak 

Definitively  of  these  mighty  things  ; 

Forgive  me,  that  I  have  not  eagle's  wings. 

That  what  I  want  I  know  not  where  to  seek. 

And  think  that  I  would  not  be  over-meek, 

In  rolling  out  upfollowed  thunderings. 

Even  to  the  steep  of  Heliconian  springs. 

Were  I  of  ample  strength  for  such  a  freak. 

Think,  too,  that  all  these  numbers  should  be  thine  ; 

Whose  else  ?     In  this  who  touch  thy  vesture's  hem  1 

For,  when  men  stared  at  what  was  most  divine 

With  brainless  idiotism  and  o'erwise  phlegm. 

Thou  hadst  beheld  the  full  Hesperian  shine 

Of  their  star  in  the  east,  and  gone  to  worship  them ! 


In  the  previous  autumn  Keats  was  in  the  habit  of  frequently 
passing  the  evening  in  his  friend's  painting-room,  where  many 
men  of  genius  were  wont  to  meet,  and,  sitting  before  some  picture 
on  which  he  was  engaged,  criticise,  ai'gue,  defend,  attack,  and 
quote  their  favorite  writers.  Keats  used  to  call  it  "  Making  us 
wings  for  the  night."  The  morning  after  one  of  these  innocent 
and  happy  symposia,  Haydon  received  a  note  inclosing  the  pictu- 
resque Sonnet 

"  Great  Spirits  now  on  Earth  arc  sojourning,"  &c. 

Keats  adding,   that  the  preceding  evening  had  wrought  him  up, 
and  he  could  not  forbear  sending  it.     Haydon  in  his  acknowledg- 


JOHN  KEATS.  .Tl 


ment,   suggested  the  omission  of  part  of  it ;    and  also  montioncd 
tliat  he  would  forward  it  to  Wordsworth  ;  he  received  this  reply  : — 

My  Dear  Sir, 

Your  letter  has  filled  me  with  a  proud  pleasure,  and 
shall  be  kept  by  me  as  a  stimulus  to  exertion.  I  begin  to  fix  my 
eyes  on  an  horizon.  My  feelings  entirely  fall  in  with  yours  with 
regard  to  the  ellipsis,  and  I  glory  in  it.  The  idea  of  your  sending 
it  to  Wordsworth  puts  me  out  of  breath — you  know  with  what 
reverence  I  would  send  my  well-wishes  to  him. 

Yours  sincei'ely, 

John  Keats. 

It  should  here  be  remembered  that  Wordsworth  was  not  then 
what  he  is  now,  that  he  was  confounded  with  much  that  was  thought 
ridiculous  and  unmanly  in  the  new  school,  and  that  it  was  some- 
tliing  for  so  young  a  student  to  have  torn  away  the  veil  of  preju- 
dice then  hanging  over  that  now-honored  name,  and  to  have 
proclaimed  liis  reverence  in  such  earnest  words,  while  so  many 
men  of  letters  could  only  scorn  or  jeer. 

The  uncongenial  profession  to  which  Keats  had  attached  him- 
self now  became  every  day  more  repulsive.  A  book  of  very 
careful  annotations,  preserved  by  Mr.  Dilke,  attests  his  diligence, 
although  a  fellow-student,*  who  lodged  in  the  same  house,  de- 
scribes him  at  the  lectures  as  scribbling  doggerel  rhymes  among 
the  notes,  particularly  if  he  got  hold  of  another  student's  syllabus. 
Of  course;  his  peculiar  tastes  did  not  find  much  sympathy  in  that 
society.  Whenever  he  showed  his  graver  poetry  to  his  compa- 
nions, it  was  pretty  sure  to  be  ridiculed  and  severely  handled. 
They  wei'o  therefore  surprised  when,  on  presenting  himself  for 
examination  at  Apothecaries'  Hall,  he  passed  his  examination  with 
considerable  credit.  When,  however,  he  entered  on  the  practical 
part  of  his  business,  although  successful  in  all  his  operations,  he 
found  his  mind  so  oppressed  during  the  task  with  an  over-wrought 
apprehension  of  the  possibility  of  doing  harm,   that  he  came  to 

*  Mr.  H.  Stephens. 


32  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  dct(  rminod  conA'ictinn  that  he  was  unfit  for  the  h'ne  of  life  on 
which  iio  had  expended  so  many  years  of  his  study  and  a  consid- 
erable part  of  his  property.  "  My  dexterity,"  he  said,  "  used  to 
seem  to  me  a  miracle,  and  I  resolved  never  to  take  up  a  surgical 
instrument  again,"  and  thus  he  found  himself,  on  his  first  entrance 
into  manhood,  thrown  on  the  world  almost  without  the  means  of 
daily  subsistence,  but  witli  many  friends  interested  in  his  fortunes, 
and  with  the  faitii  in  the  future  which  generally  accompanies  the 
highest  genius.  Mr.  Havdon  seems  to  have  been  to  hin  a  wise 
and  prudent  counselor,  and  to  have  encouraged  him  to  brace  his 
powers  by  undistracted  study,  while  he  advised  him  to  leave  Lon- 
don for  awhile,  and  take  more  care  of  his  health.  The  following 
note,  written  in  March,  shows  that  Keats  did  as  he  was  recom- 
mended : — 

My  Dear  Reynolds, 

My  brothers  are  anxious  that  I  should  go  by 
myself  into  the  country  ;  they  have  always  been  extremely  fond 
of  me,  and  now  that  Haydon  has  pointed  out  how  necessary  it  is 
that  I  should  be  alone  to  improve  myself,^hey  give  up  the  tempo- 
rary pleasure  of  being  with  me  continually  for  a  great  good  which 
I  hope  will  follow  ;  so  I  shall  soon  be  out  of  town.  You  must 
soon  bring  all  your  present  troubles  to  a  close,  and  so  must  I,  but 
we  must,  like  the  Fox,  prepare  for  a  fresh  swarm  of  fiies.  Banish 
nnoncy — Banish  sofas — Banish  wine — Banish  music;  but  right 
Jack  Health,  honest  Jack  Health,  true  Jack  Health.  Banish 
Health  and  banish  all  the  world. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

During  his  absence  he  wrote  the  following  letters.  The  cor- 
respondence with  Mr.  Reynolds  will  form  so  considerable  a  por- 
tion of  this  volume,  and  will  so  distinctly  enunciate  the  invaluable 
worth  of  his  friendship  to  Keats,  that  one  can  only  regret  that 
botli  portions  of  it  arc  not  preserved.* 

*  It  is  also  to  be  lamented  that  Mr.  Reynolds's  own  remarkable  verse  is 
not  bi'tter  known.     Lord   Byron  speaks  with  praise  of  several  pieces,  and  at- 


JOHN  KEATS.  33 


Carisbrooke,  April  17///,  1817. 
My  Dear  Reynolds, 

Ever  since  I  wrote  to  iny  brother  from  Southampton,  I 
have  been  in  a  taking,  and  at  this  moment  I  am  about  to  become 
settled,  for  I  have  unpacked  my  books,  put  them  into  a  snug  cor- 
ner, pinned  up  Haydon,  Mary  Queen  [of]  Scots,  and  Milton  with 
his  daughters  in  a  row.  In  the  passage  I  found  a  head  of  Shak- 
speare,  which  "I  had  not  before  seen.  It  is  most  likely  the  same 
that  George  spoke  so  well  of,  for  I  like  it  extremely.  Well,  this 
head  I  have  hung  over  my  bocks,  just  above  the  three  in  a  row, 
having  first  discarded  a  French  Ambassador  ;  now  this,  alone,  is 
a  good  morning's  work.  Yesterday  I  wenf  to  Shanklin,  which 
occasioned  a  great  debate  in  my  mind  whether  I  should  live  there 
or  at  Carisbrooke.  Shanklin  is  a  most  beautiful  place  ;  sloping 
wood  and  meadow  ground  reach  round  the  Chine,  which  is  a  cleft 
between  the  cliffs,  of  the  depth  of  nearly  300  feet,  at  least.  This 
cleft  is  filled  with  trees  and  bushes  in  the  narrow  part ;  and  as  it 
widens  becomes  bare,  if  it  were  not  for  primroses  on  one  side, 
which  spread  to  the  very  verge  of  the  sea,  and  some  fishermen's 
huts  on  the  other,  perched  midway  in  the  balustrades  of  beautiful 
green  hedges  along  the  steps  down  to  the  sands.  But  the  sea, 
Jack,  tlie  sea,  the  little  waterfall,  then  the  white  cliff,  then  St. 
Catherine's  Hill,  "  the  sheep  in  the  meadows,  the  cows  in  the 
corn."  Then  why  are  you  at  Carisbrooke  ?  say  you.  Because, 
in  the  first  place,  I  should  be  at  twice  the  expense,  and  three 
times  the  inconvenience  ;  next,  that  from  here  I  can  see  your 
continent  from  a  little  hill  close  by,  the  whole  north  angle  of  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  with  the  water  between  us  ;  in  the  third  place,  I 
see  Carisbrooke  Castle  from  my  window,  and  have  found  several 
delightful  wood  alleys  and  copses,  and  quiet  freshes  ;  as  for  prim- 
roses, the  island  ought  to  be  called  Primrose  Island,  that  is,  if  the 
nation  of  Cowslips  agree  thereto,  of  which  there  are  divers  clans 
just  beginning  to  lift  up  tl)eir  heads.     Another  reason  of  my  fix- 

tribules  some  to  Moore.  "  The  Fancy,"  published  under  the  name  of  Peter 
Corcoran,  and  "  The  Garden  of  Florence,"  under  ihat  of  .Tohn  Hamilton,  are 
full  of  merit,  especially  the  former,  to  which  is  prefi.Yed  one  of  the  liveliest 
specimens  of  fictitious  biography  I  know. 


34  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ing  is,  that  I  am  more  in  reacii  of  the  places  around  me.  I  in- 
tend to  walk'ovcr  the  Island,  east,  west,  north,  south.  I  have  not 
seen  many  specimens  of  ruins.  I  don't  tiiink,  however,  I  shall 
ever  see  one  to  surpass  Carisbrooke  Castle.  The  trench  is  over- 
grown with  the  smoothest  turf,  and  the  walls  with  ivy.  The 
Keep  within  side  is  one  bower  of  ivy  ;  a  colony  of  jackdaws  have 
been  there  for  many  years.  I  dare  say  I  have  seen  many  a 
descendant  of  some  old  cawer  who  peeped  through  the  bars  at 
Charles  the  First,  when  he  was  there  in  confinement.  On  the 
road  from  Cowes  to  Newport  I  saw  some  extensive  Barracks, 
which  disgusted  me  extremely  with  the  Government  for  placing 
such  a  nest  of  debauchery  in  so  beautiful  a  place.  I  asked  a 
man  on  the  coach  about  this,  and  he  said  that  the  people  had  been 
spoiled.  In  the  room  where  I  slept  at  Newport,  I  found  this  on 
the  window  ; — "  O  Isle  spoilt  by  the  milatary  !" 

The  wind  is  in  a  sulky  fit,  and  I  feel  that  it  would  be  no  bad 
thing  to  be  the  favorite  of  some  fairy,  who  would  give  one  the 
power  of  seeing  how  our  friends  got  on  at  a  distance.  I  should 
like,  of  all  loves,  a  sketch  of  you,  and  Tom,  and  George,  in  ink: 
which  Haydon  will  do  if  you  tell  him  how  I  want  them.  From 
want  of  regular  rest  I  have  been  rather  narvus,  and  the  passage 
in  Lear,  "  Do  you  not  hear  the  sea  !"  has  haunted  me  intensely. 

"  It  keeps  eternal  whisperings  around,"  &c.  * 

April  I8th. 

I'll  tell  you  what — on  the  23d  was  Shakspeare  born.  Now  if 
I  should  receive  a  letter  from  you,  and  another  from  my  brother 
on  that  day,  'twould  be  a  parlous  good  thing.  Whenever  you 
write,  say  a  word  or  two  on  some  passage  in  Shakspeare  that  may 
have  come  rather  new  to  you,  which  must  be  continually  happen- 
ing, notwithstanding  that  we  read  the  same  play  forty  times — for 
instance,  the  following  from  the  Tempest  never  struck  me  so  for- 
cibly as  at  present : — 

*  Pee  the  "  Literary  Remains," 


JOHN  KEATS.  35 


"  Urchins 
Shall,  for  that  vast  of  night  that  they  may  work, 
All  exercise  on  thee." 

How  can  I  help  bringing  to  your  mind  the  line — 

"  In  the  dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time." 

I  find  I  cannot  exist  without  Poetry — without  eternal  Poetry  ;  half 
the  day  will  not  do  the  whole  of  it.  I  began  with  a  little,  but 
habit  has  made  me  a  leviathan.  I  had  become  all  in  a  tremble 
from  not  having  written  any  thing  of  late :  the  Sonnet  over-leaf 
(i.  e.  on  the  preceding  page)  did  me  good  ;  I  slept  the  better 
last  night  for  it ;  this  morning,  however,  I  am  nearly  as  bad 
again.  Just  now  I  opened  Spenser,  and  the  first  lines  I  saw  were 
these — 

"  The  noble  heart  that  harbors  virtuous  thought 
And  is  with  child  of  glorious  great  intent. 
Can  never  rest  until  it  forth  have  brought 
Th'  eternal  brood  of  glory  excellent." 

Let  me  know  particularly  about  Haydon,  ask  him  to  write  to  me 
about  Hunt,  if  it  be  only  ten  lines.  I  hope  all  is  well.  I  shall 
forthwith  begin  my  "  Endymion,"  which  I  hope  I  shall  have  got 
some  way  with  before  you  come,  when  we  will  read  our  verses 
in  a  delightful  place,  I  have  set  my  heart  upon,  near  the  Castle. 
Give  my  love  to  your  sisters  severally. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

(Without  date,  but  written  early  in  May,  1817.) 

Margate. 
My  Dear  Haydon, 

"  Let  Fame,  that  all  pant  after  in  their  lives, 
Live  registered  upon  our  brazen  tombs. 
And  so  grace  us  in  the  disguise  of  death  ; 
When,  spite  of  cormorant  devouring  Time, 
The  endeavor  of  this  present  breath  may  bring 
That  honor  which  shall  bate  his  scythe's  keen  edge. 
And  make  us  heirs  of  all  eternity." 


36  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

To  think  that  I  have  no  riglit  to  couple  myself  with  you  ia 
this  speccli  would  be  death  to  me,  so  I  have  e'en  written  it,  and 
I  pray  God  tiiat  our  "  brazen  tombs"  be  nigh  neighbors.*  It 
cannot  be  long  first ;  the  "  endeavor  of  this  present  breath"  will 
soon  be  over,  and  yet  it  is  as  well  to  breathe  freely  during  our 
sojourn — it  is  as  well  if  you  have  not  been  teased  with  that  mo- 
ney aOair,  that  bill-pestilence.  However,  I  must  think  that  diffi- 
culties nerve  the  spirit  of  a  man  ;  they  make  our  prime  objects 
a  refuge  as  well  as  a  passion  ;  the  trumpet  of  Fame  is  as  a  tower 
of  strength,  the  ambitious  bloweth  it,  and  is  safe.  I  suppose,  by 
your  telling  me  not  to  give  way  to  forebodings,  George  has  been 
telling  you  what  I  have  lately  said  in  my  letters  to  him ;  truth  is, 
I  have  been  in  such  a  state  of  mind  as  to  read  over  my  lines  and 
to  hate  them.  I  am  one  that  '-gathereth  samphire,  dreadful 
trade :"  the  cliff  of  Poetry  towers  above  me ;  yet  when  my  bro- 
ther reads  some  of  Pope's  Homer,  or  Plutarch's  Lives,  they  seem 
like  music  to  mine.  I  read  and  write  about  eight  hours  a-day. 
There  is  an  old  saying,  "  Well  begun  is  half  done  ;"  'tis  a  bad 
one;  I  would  use  instead,  "  Not  begun  at  all  till  half  done  ;"  so, 
according  to  that,  1  have  not  begun  my  Poem,  and  consequently, 
d  priori,  can  say  nothing  about  it ;  thank  God,  I  do  begin  ar- 
dently, when  I  leave  off,  notwithstanding  my  occasional  depres- 
sions, and  I  hope  for  the  support  of  a  higii  powei:  while  I  climb 
this  little  eminence,  and  especially  in  my  years  of  momentous  la- 
bor. I  remember  your  saying  that  you  had  notions  of  a  good 
Genius  presiding  over  you.  I  have  lately  had  the  same  thought, 
for  things  which,  done  half  at  random,  are  afterwards  confirmed 
by  my  judgment  in  a  dozen  features  of  propriety.  Is  it  too  daring 
to  fancy  Shakspeare  this  presider  ?  When  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  I 
met  with  a  Shakspeare  in  the  passage  of  the  house  at  which  I 
lodged.  It  comes  nearer  to  my  idea  of  him  than  any  I  have  seen; 
I  was  but  there  a  week,  yet  the  old  woman  made  me  take  it  with 
me,  though  I  went  off  in  a  hurry.     Do  you  not  think   this  omin- 


*  To  the  copy  of  this  letter,  given  me  by  Mr.  Haydon  on  the  14ih  of  May, 
1846,  a  note  was  affixed  at  this  place,  in  the  words  "  Perhaps  they  may  be." 
— Alas  !  no. 


JOHN  KEATS.  37 


ous  of  good  ?     I  am  glad  you  say  every  man  of  great  views  is  at 
times  tormented  as  I  am. 

(Sunday  after.)  Tliis  morning  I  received  a  letter  from  George, 
by  which  it  appears  that  money  troubles  are  to  follow  up  for  some 
time  to  come — perhaps  for  always :  those  vexations  arc  a  great 
hinderance  to  one ;  they  are  not,  like  envy  and  detraction,  stimu- 
lants to  further  exertions,  as  being  immediately  relative  and  re- 
flected on  at  the  same  time  with  the  prime  object ;  but  rather  like 
a  nettle-leaf  or  two  in  your  bed.  So  now  T  revoke  my  promise  of 
finishing  my  Poem  by  autumn,  which  1  should  have  done  had  I  gone 
on  as  I  have  done.  But  I  cannot  write  while  my  spirit  is  fevered  in 
a  contrary  difection,  and  T  am  now  sure  of  having  plenty  of  it  this 
summer  ;  at  this  moment  I  am  in  no  enviable  situation.  I  feel  that 
I  am  not  in  a  mood  to  write  any  to-day,  and  it  appears  that  the  loss 
of  it  is  the  beginning  of  all  sorts  of  irregularities.  I  am  extremely 
glad  that  a  time  must  come  when  every  hing  will  leave  not  a  wreck 
behind.  You  tell  me  never  to  despair.  I  wish  it  was  as  easy  for 
me  to  observe  this  saying :  truth  is,  I  have  a  horrid  morbidity  of 
temperament,  which  has  shown  itself  at  intervals ;  it  is,  I  have  no 
doubt,  the  greatest  stumbling-block  I  have  to  fear ;  I  may  surer 
say,  it  is  likely  to  be  the  cause  of  my  disappointment.  However, 
every  ill  has  its  share  of  good  ;  this,  my  bane,  would  at  any  time 
enable  me  to  look  with  an  obstinate  eye  on  the  very  devil  him- 
self; or,  to  be  as  proud  to  be  the  lowest  of  the  human  race,  as 
Alfred  would  be  in  being  of  the  highest.  I  am  very  sure  that 
you  do  love  me  as  your  very  brother.  1  have  seen  it  in  your  con- 
tinual anxiety  for  me,  and  I  assure  you  that  your  welfare  and 
fame  is,  and  will  be,  a  chief  pleasure  to  me  all  my  life.  I  know 
no  one  but  you  who  can  be  fully  aware  of  the  turmoil  and  anxiety, 
the  .sacrifice  of  all  that  is  called  comfort,  the  readiness  to  measure 
time  by  what  is  done,  and  to  die  in  six  hours,  could  plans  be  brought 
to  conclusions  ;  the  looking  on  the  sun,  tlie  moon,  the  stars,  the 
earth,  and  its  contents,  as  materials  to  form  greater  things,  that  is 
to  say,  ethereal  things — but  here  I  am  talking  like  a  madman, — 
greater  things  than  our  Creator  himself  made. 

I  wrote  to yesterday :  scarcely  know  what  I  said  in  it ; 

I  could  not  talk  about  poetry  in  the  way  I  should  have  liked,  for 

3 


38  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

I  was  not  in  humor  with  either  his  or  mine.  There  is  no  greater 
sin,  after  the  seven  deadly,  than  to  flatter  one's  self  into  the  idea 
of  being  a  great  poet,  or  one  of  those  beings  who  are  privileged  to 
wear  out  their  lives  in  the  pursuit  of  honor.  How  comfortable  a 
thing  it  is  to  feel  that  such  a  crime  must  bring  its  heavy  penalty, 
that  if  one  be  a  self-deluder,  accounts  must  be  balanced  !  I  am 
glad  you  are  hard  at  work ;  it  will  now  soon  be  done.  I  long  to 
see  Wordsworth's,  as  well  as  to  have  mine  in  ;  but  I  would  rather 
not  show  my  face  in  town  till  the  end  of  the  year,  if  that  would 
be  time  enough  ;  if  not,  1  shall  be  disappointed  if  you  do  not  write 
me  ever  when  you  think  best.  I  never  quite  despair,  and  I  read 
Shakspeare, — indeed,  I  shall,  I  think,  never  read  a«y  other  book 
much ;  now  this  might  lead  me  into  a  very  long  confab,  but  I 
desist.  I  am  very  near  agreeing  with  Hazlitt,  that  Shakspeare 
is  enough  for  us.  By  the  by,  what  a  tremendous  Southean 
article  this  last  was.  I  wish  he  had  left  out  "  gray  hairs."  It 
was  very  gratifying  to  meet  your  remarks  on  the  manuscript.  I 
was  reading  Antony  and  Cleopatra  when  1  got  the  paper,  and 
there  are  several  passages  applicable  to  the  events  you  com- 
mentate. You  say  that  he  arrived  by  degrees,  and  not  by  any 
single  struggle,  to  the  height  of  his  ambition,  and  that  his  life  had 
been  as  common  in  particular  as  other  men's.  Shakspeare 
makes  Enobarbus  say, 

"  Where's  Antony  ? 
Eros.  He's  walking  in  the  garden,  and  spurns 
The  rush  before  him  ;  cries.  Fool,  Lepidus  .'" 

In  the  same  scene  we  find — 

"  Let  determined  things 
To  destiny  hold  unbewailed  their  way." 

Dolabella  says  of  Antony's  messenger, 

"  An  argument  that  he  is  plucked,  when  hither 
He  sends  so  poor  a  pinion  of  his  wing." 

Then  again  Enobarbus  : 


JOHN  KEATS.  39 


"  men's  judgments  are 
A  parcel  of  their  fortunes  ;  and  things  outward 
Do  draw  thi^  inward  quality  after  ihem, 
To  suffer  all  alike." 

The  following  applies  well  to  Bertrand  : 

"  Yet  he  that  can  endure 
To  follow  with  allegiance  a  fallen  Lord, 
Does  conquer  him,  that  did  his  master  conquer, 
And  earns  a  place  i'  the  story." 

'Tis  good,  too,  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington  has  a  good  word 
or  so  in  the  "  Examiner ;"  a  man  ought  to  have  the  fame  he  de- 
serves ;  and  I  begin  to  think  that  detracting  from  him  is  the  same 
thing  as  from  Wordsworth.  I  wish  he  (Wordsworth)  had  a  little 
more  taste,  and  did  not  in  that  respect  "  deal  in  Lieutenantry." 
You  should  have  heard  from  me  before  this ;  but,  in  the  first 
place,  I  did  not  like  to  do  so,  before  I  had  got  a  little  way  in  the 
first  Book,  and  in  the  next,  as  G.  told  me  you  were  going  to 
write,  I  delayed  till  I  heard  from  you.  So  now  in  the  name  of 
Shakspeare,  Raphael,  and  all  our  Saints,  I  commend  you  to  the 
care  of  Heaven. 

Your  everlasting  friend, 

John  Keats. 

In  the  early  part  of  May,  it  appears  from  the  following  ex- 
tract of  a  letter  to  Mr.  Hunt,*  written  from  Margate,  that  the  so- 
journ in  the  Isle  of  Wight  had  not  answered  his  expectations:  the 
solitude,  or  rather  the  company  of  self,  was  too  much  for  him. 

"  I  went  to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  thought  so  much  about  poetry, 
so  long  together,  that  I  could  not  get  to  sleep  at  night ;  and,  more- 
over, I  know  not  how  it  is,  I  could  not  get  wholesome  food.  By 
this  means,  in  a  week  or  so,  I  became  not  over  capable  in  my 
upper  .stories,  and  set  ofi'  pell-mell  for  Margate,  at  least  a  hundred 
and  fifty  miles,  because,  forsooth,  I  fancied  I  should  like  my  old 
lodgings  here,  and  could  conthiue  to  do  without  trees.     Another 

*  Given  entire  in  the  first  volume  of  "  Lord  Byron  and  some  of  his  Con- 
temporaries." 


40  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

thing,  1  was  too  much  in  solitude,  and  consequently  was  obliged 
to  be  in  continual  burning  of  thought  as  an  only  resource.  How- 
ever, Tom  is  with  me  at  present,  and  we  are  very  comfortable. 
We  intend,  though,  to  get  among  some  trees.  How  have  you  got 
on  among  them  ?  How  are  the  nymphs  ? — I  suppose  they  have 
led  you  a  fine  dance.     Where  are  you  now  ? 

"  I  have  asked  myself  so  often  why  I  should  be  a  Poet  more 
than  otlier  men,  seeing  how  great  a  thing  it  is,  how  great  things 
are  to  be  gained  by  it,  what  a  thing  to  be  in  the  mouth  of  Fame, 
that  at  last  the  idea  has  grown  so  monstrously  beyond  my  seem- 
ing power  of  attainment,  thai  the  other  day  I  nearly  consented 
with  myself  to  drop  into  a  Phaeton.  Yet  'tis  a  disgrace  to  fail 
even  in  a  huge  attempt,  and  at  this  moment  I  drive  the  thought 
from  me.  I  begun  my  poem  about  a  fortnight  since,  and  have 
done  some  every  day,  except  traveling  ones.  Perhaps  I  may 
have  done  a  good  deal  for  the  time,  but  it  appears  such  a  pin's 
point  to  me,  that  I  will  not  copy  any  out.  When  I  consider  that 
so  many  of  these  pin-points  go  to  form  a  bodkin-point,  (God  send 
I  end  not  my  life  with  a  bare  bodkin,  in  its  modern  sense,)  and 
that  it  requires  a  thousand  bodkins  to  make  a  spear  bright  enough 
to  throw  any  light  lo  posterity,  I  see  nothing  but  continual  up-hill 
journeying.  Nor  is  there  any  thing  more  unpleasant  (it  may 
come  among  the  thousand  and  one)  than  to  be  so  journeying  and 
to  miss  the  goal  at  last.  But  I  intend  to  whistle  all  these  cogita- 
tions into  the  sea,  where  I  hope  they  will  breed  storms  violent 
enough  to  block  up  all  exit  from  Russia. 

"  Does  Shelley  go  on  telling  '  strange  stories  of  the  deaths  of 
kings  V*     Tell  him    there  are  strange  stories  of  the    death  of 

*  Mr.  Hunt  mentions  that  Shelley  was  fond  of  quoting  the  passage  in 
Shakspeare..  and  of  applying  it  in  an  unexpected  manner.  Traveling  with 
him  once  to  town  in  the  Hanipstead  stage,  in  which  their  only  companion 
was  an  old  lady,  who  sat  silent  and  stiff,  after  the  English  fashion,  Shelley 
startled  her  into  a  look  of  the  most  ludicrous  astonishment,  by  saying  ab- 
ruptly, 

"  Hist ! 
For  God's  sake,  let  us  sit  upon  the  ground, 
And  tell  strange  stories  of  the  deaths  of  king>." 
The  old  lady  looked  on  the  coach  floor,  expecting  them  lo  take  their  seats 
accordingly. 


JOHN  KEATS.  41 


poets.     Some  have  died  before  they  were   conceived.     '  How  do 
you  make  that  out,  Master  Vellum  ?'  " 


This  letter  is  signed  "  John  Keats  alias  Junkets,"  an  appella- 
tion given  him  in  play  upon  his  name,  and  in  allusion  to  his 
friends  of  Fairy-land. 

The  poem  here  begun  was  "  Endymion."  In  the  first  poem  of 
the  early  volume  some  lines  occur  showing  that  the  idea  had  long 
been  germinating  in  his  fancy  ;  and  how  suggestive  of  a  multi- 
tude of  images  is  one  such  legend  to  an  earnest  and  constructive 
mind ! 

"  He  was  a  poet,  sure  a  lover  too, 
Who  stood  on  Latmos'  top,  what  time  there  blew 
Soft  breezes  from  the  myrtle  vale  below  ; 
And  brought,  in  fainlness,  solemn,  sweet,  and  slow 
A  hymn  from  Dian's  temple — while  upswelling, 
The  incense  went  to  her  own  starry  dwelling. — 
But,  though  her  face  was  clear  as  infants'  eyes, 
Though  she  stood  smiling  o'er  the  sacrifice. 
The  Poet  wept  at  her  so  piteous  fate. 
Wept  that  such  beauty  should  be  desolate  : 
So,  in  fine  wrath,  some  golden  sounds  he  won, 
And  gave  meek  Cynthia  her  Endymion." 

And  the  description  of  the  effect  of  the  union  of  the  Poet  and 
the  Goddess  on  universal  nature  is  equal  in  vivacity  and  tender- 
ness to  any  thing  in  the  maturer  work. 

"  The  evening  weather  was  so  bright  and  clear 
That  men  of  health  were  of  unusual  cheer, 
Stepping  like  Homer  at  the  trumpet's  call. 
Or  young  Apollo  on  the  pedestal  ; 
And  lovely  woman  there  is  fair  and  warm. 
As  Venus  looking  sideways  in  alarm. 
The  breezes  were  ethereal  and  pure, 
And  crept  through  half-closed  lattices,  to  cure 
The  languid  sick ;  it  cooled  their  fevered  sleep. 
And  soothed  them  into  slumbers  full  and  deep. 
Soon  ihey  awoke,  clear-eyed,  nor  burnt  with  thirsting. 
Nor  with  hot  fingers,  nor  with  temples  bursting. 


42  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

And  springing  up  they  met  the  wond'ring  sight 
Of  their  dear  friends,  nigh  foolish  with  delight, 
Who  feel  their  arms  and  breasts,  and  kiss  and  stare. 
And  on  their  placid  foreheads  part  the  hair. 
Young  men  and  maidens  at  each  other  gazed, 
With  hands  held  back  and  motionless,  amazed 
To  see  the  brightness  in  each  other's  eyes  ; 
And  so  they  stood,  filled  with  a  sweet  surprise. 
Until  their  tongues  were  loosed  in  poesy ; 
Therefore  no  lover  did  of  anguish  die, 
But  the  soft  numbers,  in  that  moment  spoken, 
Made  silken  ties  that  never  may  be  broken." 

George  Keats  had  now  for  some  time  left  the  counting-house 
of  Mr.  Abbey,  his  guardian,  on  account  of  the  conduct  of  a 
younger  partner  towards  him,  and  had  taken  lodgings  with  his 
two  brothers.  Mr.  Abbey  entertained  a  high  opinion  of  his  prac- 
tical abilities  and  energies,  which  experience  shortly  verified. 
Tom,  the  youngest,  had  more  of  the  poetic  and  sensitive  tempera- 
ment, and  the  bad  state  of  health  into  which  he  fell,  on  entering 
manhood,  absolutely  precluded  him  from  active  occupation.  He 
was  soon  compelled  to  retire  to  Devonshire,  as  his  only  chance 
for  life,  and  George  accompanied  him.  John,  in  the  meantime, 
was  advancing  with  his  poem,  and  had  come  to  an  arrangement 
with  Messrs.  Taylor  and  Hessey  (who  seem  to  have  cordially 
appreciated  his  genius)  respecting  its  publication.  The  follow- 
ing letters  indicate  that  they  gave  liim  tangible  proofs  of  their 
interest  in  his  welfare,  and  his  reliance  on  their  generosity  was, 
probably,  only  equal  to  his  trust  in  his  own  abundant  powers  of 
repayment.  The  physical  symptoms  he  alludes  to  had  nothing 
dangerous  about  them,  and  merely  suggested  some  prudence  in 
his  mental  labors.  Nor  had  he  then  experienced  the  harsh  re- 
pulse of  ungenial  criticism,  but,  although  never  unconscious  of 
his  own  deficiencies,  nor  blind  to  the  jealousie  3  and  spites  of  oth- 
ers, believed  himself  to  be,  on  the  whole,  accompanied  on  his 
path  to  fame  by  the  sympathies  and  congratulations  of  all  the  fel- 
low-men  he  cared  for  :  and  they  were  many. 


JOHN  KEATS.  43 


Margate,  ilfa//  IGlh,  1817. 
My  Dear  Sir, 

I  am  extremely  indebted  to  you  for  your  liberality  intlie 
shape  of  manufactured  rag,  value  20/.,  and  shall  immediately 
proceed  to  destroy  some  of  the  minor  heads  of  that  hydra  tlie 
Dun  ;  to  conquer  which  the  knight  need  have  no  sword,  shield, 
cuirass,  cuisses,  herbadgeon,  spear,  casque,  greaves,  paldrons, 
spurs,  chevron,  or  any  other  scaly  commodity,  but  he  need  only 
take  the  Bank-note  of  Faith  and  Cash  of  Salvation,  and  set  out 
against  the  monster,  invoking  the  aid  of  no  Archimago  or  Ur- 
ganda,  but  finger  me  the  paper,  light  as  the  Sybil's  leaves  in  Vir- 
gil, whereat  the  fiend  skulks  off"  with  his  tail  between  his  legs. 
Touch  him  with  this  enchanted  paper,  and  he  whips  you  his  head 
away  as  fast  as  a  snail's  horn  ;  but  then  the  horrid  propensity  he 
has  to  put  it  up  again  has  discouraged  many  very  valiant  knights. 
He  is  such  a  never-ending,  still-beginning,  sort  of  a  body,  like  my 
landlady  of  the  Bell.  I  think  I  could  make  a  nice  little  allegori- 
cal poem,  called  "  The  Dun,"  where  we  would  have  the  Castle  of 
Carelessness,  the  Drawbi'idge  of  Credit,  Sir  Novelty  Fashion's 
expedition  against  the  City  of  Tailors,  &:c.  &c.  I  went  day  by 
day  at  my  poem  for  a  month  ;  at  the  end  of  which  time,  the  other 
day,  I  found  my  brain  so  overwrought,  that  I  had  neither  rhyme 
nor  reason  in  it,  so  was  obliged  to  give  up  for  a  few  days.  I  hope 
soon  to  be  able  to  resume  my  work.  I  have  endeavored  to  do  so 
once  or  twice  ;  but  to  no  purpose.  Instead  of  poetry,  I  have  a 
swimming  in  my  head,  and  feel  all  the  effects  of  a  mental  de- 
bauch, lowness  of  spirits,  anxiety  to  go  on,  without  the  power  to 
do  so,  which  does  not  at  all  tend  to  my  ultimate  progression. 
However,  to-morrow  I  will  begin  my  next  month.  This  evening 
I  go  to  Canterbury,  having  got  tired  of  Margate ;  I  was  not  right 
in  my  head  when  I  came.  At  Canterbury  I  hope  the  remem- 
brance of  Chaucer  will  set  me  forward  like  a  billiard  ball.  I 
have  some  idea  of  seeing  the  Continent  some  time  this  summer. 

In  repeating   how  sensible  I  am  of  your  kindness,    I    remain, 
your  obedient  servant  and  friend, 

John  Keats. 

I  shall  be  happy  to  hear  any  little  intelligence  in  the  literary 
or  friendly  way  when  you  have  time  to  scribble. 


44  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

10th  July,  1817. 

My  Dear  Sir, 

A  couple  of  Duns  that  I  thought  would  be  silent  till  the 
beginning,  at  least,  of  next  month,  (when  I  am  certain  to  be  on 
my  legs,  for  certain  sure,)  have  opened  upon  me  with  a  cry  most 
"  untunable ;"  never  did  you  hear  such  "  ungallant  chiding." 
Now,  you  must  know,  I  am  not  so  desolate,  but  have,  thank  God, 
twenty-five  good  notes  in  my  fob.  But  then,  you  know,  I  laid 
them  by  to  write  with,  and  would  stand  at  bay  a  fortnight  ere 
they  should  quit  me.  In  a  month's  time  I  must  pay,  but  it 
would  relieve  my  mind  if  I  owed  you,  instead  of  these  pelican 
duns. 

I  am  afraid  you  will  say  I  have  "  wound  about  with  circum- 
stance," when  I  should  have  asked  plainly.  However,  as  I  said, 
I  am  a  little  maidenish  or  so,  and  I  feel  my  virginity  come  strong 
upon  me,  the  while  I  request  the  loan  of  a  20^.  and  a  10^.,  which, 
if  you  would  inclose  to  me,  I  would  acknowledge  and  save 
myself  a  hot  forehead.  I  am  sure  you  are  confident  of  my 
responsibility,  and  in  the  sense  of  squareness  that  is  always  in 
me. 

Your  obliged  friend, 

John  Keats. 

In  September  he  visited  his  friend  Bailey  at  Oxford,  and  wrote 
thus : — 

"  Believe  me,  my  dear ,  it  is  a  great  happiness  to  see 

that  you  arc,  in  this  finest  part  of  the  year,  winning  a  little  enjoy- 
ment from  the  hard  world.  In  truth,  the  great  elements  we  know 
of,  are  no  mean  comforters  :  the  open  sky  sits  upon  our  senses  like 
a  sapphire  crown  ;  the  air  is  our  robe  of  state  ;  the  earth  is  our 
throne ;  and  the  sea  a  mighty  minstrel  playing  before  it — able, 
like  David's  harp,  to  make  such  a  one  as  you  forget  almost  the 
tempest  cares  of  life.  I  have  found  in  the  ocean's  music, — vary- 
ing (the  self-same)  more  than  the  passion  of  Timotheus,  an  enjoy- 
ment not  to  be  put  into  words  ;  and,  '  though  inland  far  I  be,'  1 
now  hear  the  voice  most  audibly  while  pleasing  myself  in  the  idea 
of  your  sensations. 


JOHN  KEATS.  45 


'< is  getting  well  apace,  and  if  you  have  a  few  trees,  and 

a  little  harvesting  about  you,  I'll  snap  my  fingers  in  Lucifer's  eye. 
I  hope  you  bathe  too  ;  if  you  do  not,  I  earnestly  recommend 
it.  Bathe  thrice  a  week,  and  let  us  have  no  more  sitting  up 
next  winter.  Which  is  the  best  of  Shakspeare's  plays  ?  I 
mean  in  what  mood  and  with  what  accompaniment  do  you 
like  the  sea  best  ?     It  is  very  fine  in  the  morning,  when  the  sun, 

'  Opening  on  Neptune  with  fair  blessed  beams, 
Turns  into  yellow  gold  his  salt  sea  streams  ;" 

and  superb  when 

'  The  Sun  from  meridian  height 
Illumines  the  depth  of  the  sea, 
And  the  fishes,  beginning  to  sweat, 
Cry  d it  I  how  hot  we  shall  be  ;" 

and  gorgeous,  when  the  fair  planet  hastens 

'  To  his  home 
Within  the  Western  foam.' 

But  don't  you  think  there  is  something  extremely  fine  after  sun- 
set, when  there  are  a  few  white  clouds  about,  and  a  feiv  stars 
blinking  ;  when  the  waters  are  ebbing,  and  the  horizon  a  mystery  ? 
This  state  of  things  has  been  so  fulfilling  to  me  that  I  am  anxious 

to  hear  whether  it  is  a  favorite  with  you.     So  when  you  and 

club  your  letter  to  me,  put  in  a  word  or  two  about  it.  Tell  Dilke 
that  it  would  be  perhaps  as  well  if  he  left  a  pheasant  or  partridge 
alive  here  and  there  to  keep  up  a  supply  of  game  for  next  season  ; 
tell  him  to  rein  in,  if  possible,  all  the  Nimrod  of  his  disposition, 
he  being  a  mighty  hunter  before  the  Lord  of  the  manor.  Tell 
him  to  shoot  fair,  and  not  to  have  at  the  poor  devils  in  a  furrow : 
when  they  are  flying  he  may  fire,  and  nobody  will  be  the  wiser. 
"  Give  my  sincerest  respects  to  Mrs.  Dilke,  saying  that  I  have 
not  forgiven  myself  for  not  having  got  her  the  little  box  of  medi- 
cine I  promised,  and  that,  had  I  remained  at  Hampstead,  I  would 
have  made  precious  havoc  with  her  house  and  furniture — drawn 
a  great  harrow   over  her  garden — poisoned    Boxer — eaten    her 

3* 


46  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ciothes-pegs — fried  her  cabbages — fricaseed  (liow  is  it  spelt  ?)  her 
radishes — ragouted  her  onions — belabored  her  beai-rooi — outstrip- 
ped her  scarlet-runners — parlez-vous^d  with  her  french-beans — 
devoui'ed  her  mignon  or  mignionette — metamorphosed  her  bell- 
handles — splintered  her  looking-glasses — bullocked  at  her  cups 

and  saucers — agonized  her  decanters — put  old  P to  pickle  in 

the  brine-tub — disorganized  her  piano — dislocated  her  candlesticks 
— emptied   her  wine-bins  in  a  fit  of  despair — turned  out  her  maid 

to  grass — and  astonished   B ;    whose  letter  to  her  on  these 

events  I  would  rather  see  than  the  original  copy  of  the  Book  of 
Genesis. 

"  Poor  Bailey,  scarcely  ever  well,  has  gone  to  bed,  pleased 
that  I  am  writing  to  you.  To  your  brother  John  (whom  hence- 
forth I  shall  consider  as  mine)  and  to  you,  my  dear  friends,  I  shall 
ever  feel  grateful  for  having  made  known  to  me  so  real  a  fellow 
as  Bailey.  He  delights  me  in  the  selfish,  and  (please  God)  the 
disinterested  part  of  my  disposition.  If  the  old  Poets  have  any 
pleasure  in  looking  down  at  the  enjoyers  of  their  works,  their  eyes 
must  bend  with  a  double  satisfaction  upon  him.  I  sit  ;  s  at  a  feast 
when  he  is  over  them,  and  pray  that  if,  after  my  death,  any  of  my 
labors  should  be  worth  saving,  they  may  have  so  '  honest  a  chro- 
nicler'  as  Bailey.  Out  of  this,  his  enthusiasm  in  his  own  pursuit 
and  for  all  good  things  is  of  an  exalted  kind — worthy  a  more 
healthful  frame  and  an  untorn  spirit.  He  must  have  happy  years 
to  come — '  he  shall  not  die,  by  God.' 

"  A  letter  from  John  the  other  day  was  a  chief  happiness  to 
me.  I  made  a  little  mistake,  when,  just  now,  1  talked  of  being 
far  inland.  How  can  that  be,  when  Endymion  and  I  are  at  the 
bottom  of  the  sea  ?  whence  1  hope  to  bring  him  in  safety  before 
you  leave  the  sea-side ;  and,  if  I  can  so  contrive  it,  you  shall  be 
greeted  by  him  upon  the  sea-sands,  and  he  shall  tell  you  all  his 
adventures,  which  having  finished,  he  shall  thus  proceed — '  My 
dear  Ladies,  favorites  of  my  gentle  mistress,  however  my  friend 
Keats  may  have  teased  and  vexed  you,  believe  me  he  loves  you 
not  the  less — for  instance,  I  am  deep  in  his  favor,  and  yet  he  has 
been  hauling  me  through  the  earth  and  sea  with  unrelenting  per- 
severance. 1  know  for  all  this  tliat  he  is  mighty  fond  of  me,  by 
his  contriving  me  all  sorts  of  pleasures.     Nor  is  this  the  least,  fair 


JOHN  KEATS.  47 


ladies,  this  one  of  meeting  you  on  the  desert  shore,  and  greeting 
you  in  his  name.  He  sends  you  moreover  this  little  scroll.'  My 
dear  girls,  I  send  you,  per  favor  of  Endymion,  the  assurance  of 
my  esteem  for  you,  and  my  utmost  wishes  for  your  health  and 
pleasure,  being  ever, 

"  Your  affectionate  brother, 

"  John  Keats." 

This  is  of  about  the  same  date  : — 

Oxford,  Sunday  Morning. 

My  Dear  Reynolds, 

So  you  are  determined  to  be  my  mortal  foe — 
draw  a  sword  at  me,  and  I  will  forgive — put  a  bullet  in  my  brain, 
and  J  will  shake  it  out  as  a  dew-drop  from  the  lion's  mane — put 
me  on  a  gridiron  and  I  will  fry  with  great  complacency — but — 
oh,  horror!  to  come  upon  me  in  the  shape  of  a  dun  ! — send  me 
bills  !  As  I  say  to  my  tailor,  send  me  bills  and  I'll  never  employ 
you  more.  However,  needs  must,  when  the  devil  drives:  and  for 
fear  of  "  before  and  behind  Mr.  Honeycomb,"  I'll  proceed.  I 
have  not  time  to  elucidate  the  forms  and  shapes  of  the  grass  and 
trees ;  for,  rot  it !  I  forgot  to  bring  my  mathematical  case  with 
me,  which  unfortunately  contained  my  triangular  prisms ;  so  that 
the  hues  of  the  grass  cannot  be  dissected  for  you. 

For  these  last  five  or  six  days  we  have  had  regularly  a  boat 
on  the  Isis,  and  explored  all  the  streams  about,  which  are  more 
in  number  than  your  eyelashes.  We  sometimes  skim  into  a 
bed  of  rushes,  and  there  become  naturalized  river-folks.  There 
is  one  particularly  nice  nest,  which  we  have  christened  "  Rey- 
nolds' Cove,"  in  which  we  have  read  Wordsworth,  and  talked  as 
may  be. 

*  *  *  Failings   I  am  always  rather  rejoiced  to  find  in  a  man 

than  sorry  for  ;  they  bring  us  to  a  level.     has  them,  but  then 

his   makes-up  are   very  good.     agrees  with  the   Northern 

Poet  in  this,  "  He  is  not  one  of  those  who  much  delight  to  season 
their  fireside  with  personal  talk."  I  must  confess,  however, 
having  a  little  itch  that  way,  and  at  this  present  moment  I  have  a 
few  neighborly   remarks  to  make.     The   world,  and   especially 


48  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

our  England,  has,  within  the  last  thirty  years,  been  vexed  and 
teased  by  a  set  of  devils,  whom  I  detest  so  much  that  I  almost 
hunger  after  an  Acherontic  promotion  to  a  Torturer,  purposely 
for  their  accommodation.  These  devils  are  a  set  of  women,  who 
have  taken  a  snack  or  luncheon  of  literary  scraps,  set  themselves 
up  for  towers  of  Babel  in  languages,  Sapphos  in  poetry,  Euclids  in 
geometry,  and  every  thing  in  nothing.  The  thing  has  made  a  very 
uncomfortable  impression  on  me.  I  had  longed  for  some  real 
feminine  modesty  in  these  things,  and  was  therefore  gladdened  in 
the  extreme,  on  opening,  the  other  day,  one  of  Bayley's  books — a 
book  of  poetry  written  by  one  beautiful  Mrs.  Philips,  a  friend  of 
Jeremy  Taylor's,  and  called  "  The  Matchless  Orinda."  You 
must  have  heard  of  her,  and  most  likely  read  her  poetry — I  wish 
you  have  not,  that  I  may  have  the  pleasure  of  treating  you  with 
a  few  stanzas.  I  do  it  at  a  venture.  You  will  not  regret  read- 
ing them  once  more.  The  following,  to  her  friend  Mrs.  M.  A.,  at 
parting,  you  will  judge  of. 

"  I  have  examined  and  do  find, 

Of  all  that  favor  me. 
There's  none  I  grieve  to  leave  behind. 

But  only,  only  thee  : 
To  part  with  thee  I  needs  must  die. 
Could  parting  sep'rate  thee  and  L 

But  neither  chance  nor  compliment 
Did  element  our  love  ; 
'Twas  sacred  sympathy  was  lent 

Us  from  the  Quire  above. 
That  friendship  Fortune  did  create 
Still  fears  a  wound  from  Time  or  Fate. 

Our  changed  and  mingled  souls  are  grown 

To  such  acquainlance  now, 
That,  if  each  would  resume  her  own, 

Alas  !  we  know  not  how, 
We  have  each  other  so  engrost 
That  each  is  in  the  union  lost. 

And  thus  we  can  no  absence  know. 

Nor  shall  we  be  confined  ; 
Our  active  souls  will  daily  go 

To  leani  each  other's  mind. 


JOHN  KEATS.  49 


Nay,  should  we  never  meet  to  sense 
Our  souls  would  hold  intelligence. 

Inspired  with  a  flame  divine, 

I  scorn  to  court  a  stay  ; 
For  from  that  noble  soul  of  thine 

I  ne'er  can  be  away. 
But  I  shall  weep  when  thou  dost  grieve, 
Nor  can  I  die  whilst  thou  dost  live. 

By  my  own  temper  I  shall  guess 

At  thy  felicity. 
And  only  like  my  happiness. 

Because  it  pleaseth  thee. 
Our  hearts  at  any  time  will  tell 
If  thou  or  I  be  sick  or  well. 

All  honor  sure  I  must  pretend, 

All  that  is  good  or  great  ; 
She  that  would  be  Rosannia's  friend. 

Must  be  at  least  compleat  ;* 
If  I  have  any  bravery, 
'Tis  'cause  I  have  so  much  of  thee. 

Thy  lieger  soul  in  me  shall  lie, 

And  all  thy  thoughts  reveal. 
Then  back  again  with  mine  shall  flie. 

And  thence  to  me  shall  steal. 
Thus  still  to  one  another  tend  : 
Such  is  the  sacred  name  of  friend. 

Thus  our  twin  souls  in  one  shall  grow. 

And  teach  the  world  new  love. 
Redeem  the  age  and  sex,  and  show 

A  flame  Fate  dares  not  move  : 
And  courting  Death  to  be  our  friend. 
Our  lives  together  too  shall  end. 

A  dew  shall  dwell  upon  our  tomb 

Of  such  a  quality, 
That  fighting  armies  thither  come 

Shall  reconciled  be. 
We'll  ask  no  epitaph,  but  say, 
Orinda  and  Rosannia." 

*  "  A  compleat  friend" — this  line  sounded  very  oddly  to  me  at  first. 


50  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

In  other  of  her  poems  there  is  a  most  delicate  fancy  of  the 
Fletcher  kind — which  we  will  con  over  together. 

So  Haydon  is  in  town.  I  had  a  letter  from  him  yesterday. 
We  will  contrive  as  the  winter  comes  on — but  that  is  neither  here 
nor  there.  Have  you  heard  from  Rice  ?  Has  Martin  met  with 
the  Cumberland  Beggar,  or  been  wondering  at  the  old  Leech- 
gatherer  ?  Has  he  a  turn  for  fossils  ?  that  is,  is  he  capable  of 
sinking  up  to  his  middle  in  a  morass  ?  How  is  Hazlitt  ?  We 
were  reading  his  Table  (Round  Table)  last  night.  I  know  he 
thinks  himself  not  estimated  by  ten  people  in  the  world.  I  wish 
he  knew  he  is.  I  am  getting  on  famous  with  my  third  book — 
have  written  800  lines  thereof,  and  hope  to  finish  it  next  week. 
Bailey  likes  what  I  have  done  very  much.  Believe  me,  my  dear 
Reynolds,  one  of  my  chief  layings-up  is  the  pleasure  I  shall  have 
in  showing  it  to  you,  I  may  now  say,  in  a  few  days. 

I  have  heard  twice  from  my  brothers ;  they  are  going  on  very 
well,  and  send  their  remembrances  to  you.  We  expected  to  have 
had  notices  from  little  Hampton  this  morning — we  must  wait  till 
Tuesday.  I  am  glad  of  their  days  with  the  Dilkes.  You  are,  I 
know,  very  much  teased  in  that  precious  London,  and  want  all 
the  rest  possible ;  so  [I]  shall  be  contented  with  as  brief  a  scrawl 
— a  word  or  two,  till  there  comes  a  pat  hour. 

Send  us  a  few  of  your  stanzas  to  read  in  "  Reynolds'  Cove." 
Give  my  love  and  respects  to  your  mother,  and  remember  me 
kindly  to  all  at  home. 

Yours  faithfully, 

John  Keats. 

I  have  left  the  doublings  for  Bailey,  who  is  going  to  say  that 
he  will  write  to  you  to-morrow. 

From  a  letter  to  Haydon. 

"  You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  within  these  last  three  weeks 
I  have  written  1000  lines,  which  are  the  third  book  of  my  Poem. 
My  ideas  of  it,  I  assure  you,  are  very  low,  and  I  would  write  the 
subject  thoroughly  again,  but  I  am  tired  of  it,  and  think  the  time 
would  be  better  spent  in  writing  a  new  romance,  which  1  have  in 


JOHN  KEATS.  51 


my  eye  for  next  summer.  Rome  was  not  built  in  a  day,  and  all 
the  good  I  expect  from  my  employment  this  summer  is  the  fruit 
of  experience,  whicli  I  hope  to  gather  in  my  next  Poem. 

"  Yours  eternally, 

"John  Keats." 

The  three  first  books  of  "  Endymion  "  were  finished  in  Sep- 
tember, and  portions  of  the  Poem  had  come  to  be  seen  and  can- 
vassed by  literary  friends.  With  a  singular  anticipation  of  the 
injustice  and  calumny  he  should  be  subject  to  as  belonging  to 
"  the  Cockney  School,"  Keats  stood  up  most  stoutly  for  the  inde- 
pendence of  all  personal  association  with  which  the  poem  has 
been  composed,  and  admii'ing  as  he  did  the  talents  and  spirit  of 
liis  friend  Hunt,  he  expresses  himself  almost  indignantly,  in  his 
correspondence,  at  the  thought  that  his  originality,  whatever  it 
was,  should  be  suffered  to  have  been  marred  by  the  assistance, 
influence,  or  counsel  of  Hunt,  or  any  one  else.  "  I  refused,"  he 
writes  to  Mr.  Bailey,  (Oct.  8th,)  "  to  visit  Shelley,  that  I  might 
have  my  own  unfettered  scope  ;"  and  proceeds  to  transcribe  some 
reflections  on  his  undertaking,  which  he  says  he  wrote  to  his  bro- 
ther George  in  the  spring,  and  which  are  well  worth  the  repetition. 

"  As  to  what  you  say  about  my  being  a  Poet,  I  can  return  no 
answer  but  by  saying  that  the  high  idea  I  have  of  poetical  fame 
makes  me  think  I  see  it  towering  too  high  above  me.  At  any 
rate  I  have  no  right  to  talk  until  '  Endymion  '  is  finished.  It  will 
be  a  test,  a  trial  of  my  powers  of  imagination,  and  chiefly  of  my 
invention — which  is  a  rare  thing  indeed — by  which  I  must  make 
4000  lines  of  one  bare  circumstance,  and  fill  them  with  poetry. 
And  when  I  consider  that  this  is  a  great  task,  and  that  when  done 
it  will  take  me  but  a  dozen  paces  towards  the  Temple  of  Fame — 
it  makes  me  say — '  God  forbid  that  I  should  be  without  such  a 
task  !'  I  have  heard  Hunt  say,  and  [I]  may  be  asked,  '  Why  en- 
deavor after  a  long  jwein  V  To  which  I  should  answer,  '  Do  not 
the  lovers  of  poetry  like  to  have  a  little  region  to  wander  in, 
where  they  may  pick  and  choose,  and  in  which  the  images  are  so 
numerous  that  many  are  forgotten  and  found  new  in  a  second 
reading — which  may  be  food  for  a  week's  stroll  in  the  summer  V 


52  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


Do  not  they  like  this  better  than  what  they  can  read  through  be- 
fore Mrs.  Williams  comes  down  stairs  ? — a  morning's  work  at 
most. 

"  Besides,  a  long  poem  is  a  test  of  invention,  which  I  take  to 
be  the  polar  star  of  poetry,  as  Fancy  is  the  sails,  and  Imagination 
the  rudder.  Did  our  great  poets  ever  write  short  pieces  ?  I  mean, 
in  the  shape  of  Tales.  This  same  invention  seems  indeed  of  late 
years  to  have  been  forgotten  in  a  partial  excellence.  But  enough 
of  this — I  put  on  no  laurels  till  I  shall  have  finished  '  Endymion,' 
and  I  hope  Apollo  is  not  enraged  at  my  having  made  mockery  of 
him  at  Hunt's." 

The  conclusion  of  this  letter  has  now  a  more  melancholy 
meaning  than  it  had  when  written.  "  The  little  mei'cury  I  have 
taken  has  corrected  the  poison  and  improved  my  health — though 
I  feel  from  my  employment  that  I  shall  never  again  be  secure  in 
robustness.     Would  that  you  were  as  well  as 

"  Your  sincere  friend  and  brother, 

"John  Keats." 

"  Brothers  "  they  were  in  affection  and  in  thought — brothers 
also  in  destiny.     Mr.  Bailey  died  soon  after  Keats. 

[Post-mark,  22  Nov.  1817.     Leathekhead.] 
My  Dear  Bailey, 

I  will  get  over  the  first  part  of  this  (unpaid)  letter  as 

soon  as  possible,  for  it  relates  to  the  affairs  of  poor .     To  a  man 

of  your  nature,  such  a  letter  as 's  must  have  been  extremely 

cutting.  What  occasions  the  greater  part  of  the  world's  quar- 
rels ?  Simply  this  :  two  minds  meet,  and  do  not  understand  each 
other  time  enough  to  prevent  any  shock  or  surprise  at  the  conduct 

of  either  party.     As  soon  as  I  had  known three  days,  I  had 

got  enough  of  his  character  not  to  have  been  surprised  at  such  a 
letter  as  he  has  hurt  you  with.  Nor,  when  I  knew  it,  was  it  a 
principle  with  me  to  drop  his  acquaintance  ;  although  with  you 
it  would  have  been  an  imperious  feeling.  I  wish  you  knew  all 
that  I  think  about  Genius  and   the  Heart.     And  yet  I  think  that 


JOHN  KEATS.  53 


you  are  thoroughly  acquainted  with  my  innermost  breast,  in  that 
respect,  or  you  wouhl  not  have  known  me  even  thus  long,  and  still 
hold  me  to  be  worthy  to  be  your  dear  friend.  In  passing,  how- 
ever, I  must  say  of  one  thing  that  has  pressed  upon  me  lately,  and 
increased  my  humility  and  capability  of  submission — and  that  is 
this  truth — Men  of  genius  are  great  as  certain  ethereal  chemicals 
operating  on  the  mas  of  neutral  intellect — but  they  have  not  any 
individuality,  any  determined  character.  I  would  call  the  top 
and  head  of  those  who  have  a  proper  self.  Men  of  Power. 

But  I  am  running  my  head  into  a  subject  which  I  am  certain 
I  could  not  do  justice  to  under  five  years'  study,  and  three  vols, 
octavo — and  moreover  [I]  long  to  be  talking  al)out  the  Imagina- 
tion :  so,  my  dear  Bailey,  do  not  think  of  this  unpleasant  affair,  if 
possible  do  not — I  dety  any  harm  to  come  of  it.     I  shall  write  to 

this  week,  and  request  him  to  tell  me  all  his  goings-on,  from 

time  to  time,  by  letter,  wherever  I  may  be.      It  will  go  on  well — 

so  don't,  because  you  have  discovered  a  coldness   in ,  suffer 

yourself  to  be  teased.  Do  not,  my  dear  fellow.  O  !  I  wish  I 
was  as  certain  of  the  end  of  all  your  troubles  as  that  of  your  mo- 
mentary start  about  the  authenticity  of  the  Imagination.  I  am 
certain  of  nothing  hut  of  the  holiness  of  the  heart's  affections,  and 
the  truth  of  Imagination.  What  the  Imagination  seizes  as  Beauty 
must  be  Truth,  whether  it  existed  before  or  not ; — for  I  have  the 
same  idea  of  all  our  passions  as  of  Love  ;  they  are  all,  in  their 
sublime,  creative  of  essential  Beauty.  In  a  word,  you  may  know 
my  favorite  speculation  by  my  first  book,  and  the  little  song  I 
sent  in  my  last,  which  is  a  representation  from  the  fancy  of  the 
probable  mode  of  operating  in  these  matters.  The  Imagination 
may  be  compared  to  Adam's  dream  ;  he  awoke  and  found  it 
truth.  I  am  more  zealous  in  this  affair,  because  I  have  never  yet 
been  able  to  perceive  how  any  thing  can  be  known  for  truth  by 
consecutive  reasoning, — and  yet  [so]  it  must  bo.  Can  it  be  that 
even  the  greatest  philosopher  ever  arrived  at  his  goal  without  put- 
ting aside  numerous  objections  ?  However  it  may  be,  O  for  a  life 
of  sensations  rather  than  of  thoughts  ?  It  is  "  a  Vision  in  the 
form  of  Youth,"  a  shadow  of  reality  to  come — and  this  considera- 
tion has  further  convinced  me, — for  it  has  come  as  auxiliary  to 
another  favorite   speculation  of  mine, — that  we  shall   enjoy  our- 


54  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

selves  hereafter  by  having  what  we  call  happiness  on  earth  re- 
peated in  a  finer  tone.  And  yetsucli  a  fate  can  only  befall  those 
who  deliglit  in  Sensation,  rather  than  hunger,  as  you  do,  after 
Truth.  Adam's  dream  will  do  here,  and  seems  to  be  a  conviction 
that  Imagination  and  its  empyreal  reflection  is  the  same  as  human 
life  and  its  spiritual  repetition.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  the  simple 
imaginative  mind  may  have  its  rewards  in  the  repetition  of  its  own 
silent  working  coming  continually  on  the  spirit  with  a  fine  sudden- 
ness. To  compare  great  things  with  small,  have  you  never,  by 
being  surprised  with  an  old  melody,  in  a  delicious  place,  by  a  de- 
licious  voice,  felt  over  again  your  very  speculations  and  surmises 
at  the  time  it  first  operated  on  your  soul  ?  Do  you  not  remember 
forming  to  yourself  the  singer's  face — more  beautiful  than  it  was 
possible,  and  yet,  with  the  elevation  of  the  moment,  you  did  not 
think  so  ?  Even  then  you  were  mounted  on  the  wings  of  Imagi- 
nation, so  high  that  the  prototype  must  be  hereafter — that  delicious 
face  you  will  see.  Sure  this  cannot  be  exactly  the  case  with  a 
complex  mind — one  that  is  imaginative,  and  at  the  same  time 
careful  of  its  fruits, — who  would  exist  partly  on  sensation,  partly 
on  thought — to  whom  it  is  necessary  that  "  years  should  bring  the 
philosophic  mind  ?  "  Such  a  one  I  consider  yours,  and  therefore 
it  is  necessary  to  your  eternal  happiness  that  you  not  only  drink 
this  old  wine  of  heaven,  which  I  shall  call  the  redigestion  of  our 
most  ethereal  musings  upon  earth,  but  also  increase  in  knowledge, 
and  know  all  things. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  that  you  are  in  a  fair  way  for  Easter.  You 
will  soon  get  though  your  unpleasant  reading,  and  then  ! — but  the 
world  is  full  of  troubles,  and  I  have  not  much  reason  to  think  my- 
self pestered  with  many. 

I  think or has  a  better  opinion  of  me  than  I  de- 
serve ;  for,  really  and  truly,  I  do  not  think  my  brother's  illness 
connected  with  mine.  You  know  more  of  the  real  cause  than 
they  do ;  nor  have  I  any  chance  of  being  rack'd  as  you  have 
been.  You  perhaps,  at  one  time,  thought  there  was  such  a  thing 
as  worldly  happiness  to  be  arrived  ai,  at  certain  periods  of  time 
marked  out.  You  have  of  necessity,  from  your  disposition,  been 
thus  led  away.  I  scarcely  remember  counting  upon  any  happi- 
ness.    I  look  not  for  it  if  it  be  not  in  the  present  hour.     Nothing 


JOHN  KEATS.  55 


startles  me  beyond  the  moment.  The  setting  sun  will  always  set 
me  to  rights,  or  if  a  sparrow  were  before  my  window,  I  take  part 
in  its  existence,  and  pick  about  the  gravel.  The  first  thing  that 
strikes  me  on  hearing  a  misfortune  having  befallen  another  is  this 
— "  Well,  it  cannot  be  helped  :  he  will  have  the  pleasure  of  trying 
the  resources  of  his  spirit ;"  and  I  beg  now,  my  dear  Bailey,  that 
hereafter,  should  you  observe  any  thing  cold  in  me,  not  to  put  it 
to  the  account  of  heartlessness,  but  abstraction ;  for  I  assure  you 
I  sometimes  feel  not  the  influence  of  a  passion  or  affection  during 
a  whole  week ;  and  so  long  this  sometimes  continues,  I  begin  to 
suspect  myself,  and  the  genuineness  of  my  feelings  at  other  times, 
thinking  them  a  few  barren  tragedy-tears. 

My  brother  Tom  is  much  improved ;  he  is  going  to  Devon- 
shire, whither  I  shall  follow  him.  At  present,  I  am  just  arrived 
at  Dorking,  to  change  the  scene,  change  the  air,  and  give  me  a 
spur  to  wind  up  my  poem,  of  which  there  are  wanting  .500  lines. 
I  should  have  been  here  a  day  sooner,  but  the  Reynoldses  per- 
suaded me  to  stop  in  town  to  meet  your  friend  Christie.  There 
were  Rice  and  Martin.  We  talked  about  ghosts.  I  will  have 
some  talk  with  Taylor,  and  let  /ou  know,  when,  please  God,  I 
come  down  at  Christmas.  I  will  find  the  "  Examiner,"  if  possi- 
ble. My  best  regards  to  Gleig,  my  brothers,  to  you,  and  Mrs. 
Bentley. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

I  want  to  say  much  more  to  you — a  few  hints  will  set  one  going. 

Leatherhead,  22nd  November,  1817. 
My  Dear  Reynolds, 

There  are  two  things  which  tease  me  here — 

one  of  them ,  and  the  other  that  I  cannot  go  with  Tom  into 

Devonshire.  However,  1  hope  to  do  my  duty  to  myself  in  a  week 
or  so;  and  then  I'll  try  what  I  can  do  for  my  neighbor — now,  is 
not  this  virtuous  ?  On  returning  to  town  I'll  damn  all  idleness — 
indeed,  in  superabundance  of  employment,  I  must  not  be  content 
to  run  here  and  there  on  little  two-penny  errands,  but  turn  Rakc- 
hell,  i.  e.  go  a  masking,  or  Bailey  will  think  me  just  as  great  a 


56  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

promisp-kecper  as  he  thinks  you  ;  for  myself  I  do  not,  and  do  not 
remember  above  one  complaint  against  you  for  matter  o'  that. 
Bailey  writes  so  abominable  a  hand,  to  give  his  letter  a  fair  read- 
ing requires  a  little  time,  so  I  had  not  seen,  when  I  saw  you  last, 
his  invitation  to  Oxford  at  Christmas.     I'll  go  with  you.     You 

know  how  poorly was.     I  do  not  think  it  was  all  corporeal, 

— bodily  pain  was  not  used  to  keep  him  silent.  I'll  tell  you 
what ;  he  was  hurt  at  what  your  sisters  said  about  his  joking  with 
your  mother.  It  will  all  blow  over.  God  knows,  my  dear  Ray- 
nolds,  I  should  not  talk  any  sorrow  to  you — you  must  have  enough 
vexation,  so  I  won't  say  more.  If  I  ever  start  a  rueful  subject  in 
a  letter  to  you — blow  me  !  Why  don't  you  ? — Now  I  was  going 
to  ask  you  a  very  silly  question,  [which]  neither  you  nor  any 
body  else  could  answer,  under  a  folio,  or  at  least  a  pamphlet — 
you  shall  judge.  Why  don't  you,  as  I  do,  look  unconcerned  at 
what  may  be  called  more  particularly  heart-vexations  ?  They 
never  surprise  me.  Lord  !  a  man  should  have  the  fine  point  of 
his  soul  taken  off,  to  become  fit  for  this  w'orld. 

I  like  this  place  very  much.  There  is  hill  and  dale,  and  a 
little  river.  I  went  up  Box  Ilill  this  evening  after  the  moon — 
"  you  a'  seen  the  moon  " — came  down,  and  wrote  some  lines. 
Whenever  I  am  separated  from  you,  and  not  engaged  in  a  con- 
tinued poem,  every  letter  shall  bring  you  a  lyric — but  I  am  too 
anxious  for  you  to  enjoy  the  whole  to  send  you  a' particle.  One 
of  the  three  books  I  have  with  me  is  "  Shakspeare's  Poems :"  I 
never  found  so  many  beauties  in  the  Sonnets  ;  they  seem  to  be 
full  of  fine  things  said  unintentionally — in  the  intensity  of  working 
out  conceits.     Is  this  to  be  borne  ?     Hark  ye  ! 

"  When  lofty  trees  I  see  barren  of  leaves. 
Which  erst  from  heat  did  canopy  the  head, 
And  Summer's  green  all  girded  up  in  sheaves, 
Borne  on  the  bier  w^ith  white  and  bristly  head." 

He  has  left  nothing  to  say  about  nothing  or  any  thing :  for 
look  at  snails — you  know  what  he  says  about  snails — you  know 
when  he  talks  about  "cockled  snails" — well,  in  one  of  these 
sonnets,  he  says — the  chap  slips  into — no  !  I  lie  !  this  is  in  the 
"  Venus  and  Adonis:"  the  simile  brought  it  to  my  mind. 


JOHN  KEATS.  57 


"  As  the  snail,  whose  tender  horns  being  hit, 
Shrinks  back  into  his  shelly  cave  with  pain, 
And  there  all  smothered  up  in  shade  doth  sit, 
Long  after  fearing  to  put  forth  again  ; 
So  at  his  bloody  view  her  eyes  are  fled. 
Into  the  deep  dark  cabins  of  her  head." 

He  overwhelms  a  genuine  lover  of  poetry  with  all  manner  of 
abuse,  talking  about — 

"  A  poet's  rage 
And  stretched  metre  of  an  antique  song." 

Which,  by  the  by,  will  be  a  capital  motto  for  my  poem,  won't  it  ? 
He  speaks  too  of  "  Time's  antique  pen  " — and  "  April's  first-born 
flowers" — and  "Death's  eternal  cold." — By  the  Whim-King! 
I'll  give  you  a  stanza,  because  it  is  not  material  in  connection, 
and  when  I  wrote  it  1  wanted  you  to  give  your  vote,  pro  or  con. 

Chrystalline  Brother  of  the  belt  of  Heaven, 

Aquarius  !   to  whom  King  Jove  hath  given 

Two  liquid  pulse-streams,  'stead  of  feather'd  wings — 

Two  fan-like  fountains — thine  illuminings 

For  Dian  play  : 

Disssolve  the  frozen  purity  of  air  ; 

Let  thy  white  shoulders,  silvery  and  bare. 

Show  cold  through  wat'ry  pinions  :  make  more  bright 

The  Star-Queen's  crescent  on  her  marriage-night : 

Haste,  haste  away  ! 

I  see  there  is  an  advertisement  in  the  "  Chronicle  "  to  Poets — 
he  is  so  overloaded  with  poems  on  the  "late  Princess."  I  sup- 
pose you  do  not  lack — .send  me  a  kw — lend  me  thy  hand  to  laugh 
a  little — send  me  a  little  pullet-sperm,  a  few  finch-eggs — and  re- 
member me  to  each  of  our  card-playing  Club.  When  you  die 
you  will  all  be  turned  into  dice,  and  be  put  in  pawn  with  the 
devil  :  for  cards,  they  crumple  up  like  any  thing. 

I  rest, 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Give  my  love  to  both  houses — hinc  atque  illinc. 


58  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

"  Endymion  "  was  finished  at  Burford  Bridge,  on  the  28th  of 
November,  1817  ;  so  records  the  still  existing  manuscript,  written 
fairly  in  a  book,  with  many  corrections  of  phrases  and  some  of 
lines,  but  with  few  of  sentences  or  of  arrangement.  It  betrays 
the  leading  fault  of  the  composition,  namely,  the  dependence  of 
the  matter  on  the  rhyme,  but  shows  the  confidence  of  the  poet  in 
his  own  profusion  of  diction,  the  strongest  and  most  emphatic 
words  being  generally  taken  as  those  to  which  the  continuing 
verse  was  to  be  adapted.  There  was  no  doubt  a  pleasure  to  him 
in  this  very  victory  over  the  limited  harmonies  of  our  language, 
and  the  result,  when  fortunate,  is  very  impressive  ;  yet  the  fol- 
lowing criticism  of  his  friend,  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt,  is  also  just: — 

"He  had  a  just  contempt  for  the  monotonous  termination  of 
every-day  couplets  ;  he  broke  up  his  lines  in  order  to  distribute 
the  rhyme  properly ;  but,  going  only  upon  the  ground  oi'  his  con- 
tempt,  and  not  having  yet  settled  with  himself  any  principle  of 
versification,  the  very  exuberance  of  his  ideas  led  him  to  make 
use  of  the  first  rhymes  that  offered  ;  so  that,  by  a  new  meeting  of 
extremes,  the  effect  was  as  artificial,  and  much  more  obtrusive, 
than  one  under  the  old  system.  Dryden  modestly  confessed  that 
a  rhyme  had  often  helped  him  to  a  thought.  Mr.  Keats,  in  the 
tyranny  of  his  wealth,  forced  his  rhymes  to  help  him,  whether 
they  would  or  not,  and  they  obeyed  him,  in  the  most  singular 
manner,  with  equal  promptitude  and  ingeniousness ;  though  oc- 
casionally in  the  MS.,  when  the  second  line  of  the  couplet  could 
not  be  made  to  rhyme,  the  sense  of  the  first  is  arbitrarily  altered, 
and  its  sense  cramped  into  a  new  and  less  appropriate  form." 

Keats  passed  the  winter  of  1817-18  at  Hampstead,  gayly 
enough  among  his  friends  ;  his  society  was  much  sought  after, 
from  tlie  delightful  combination  of  earnestness  and  pleasantry 
which  distinguished  his  intercourse  with  all  men.  There  was  no 
effort  about  him  to  say  fine  things,  but  he  did  say  them  most  ef- 
fectively, and  they  gained  considerably  by  his  happy  transition  of 
manner.  He  joked  well  or  ill,  as  it  happened,  and  with  a  laugh 
which  still  echoes  sweetly  in  many  ears  ;  but  at  the  mention  of 
oppression  or  wrong,  or  at  any  calumny  against  those  he  loved,  he 
rose  into  grave  manliness  at  once,  and  seemed  like  a  tall  man. 
His  habitual  gentleness  made  his  occasional  looks  of  indignation 


JOHN  KEATS.  59 


almost  terrible :  on  one  occasion,  when  a  gross  falsehood  respect- 
ing the  young  artist,  Severn,  was  repeated  and  dwelt  upon,  he  left 
the  room,  declaring  "  he  should  be  ashamed  to  sit  with  men  who 
could  utter  and  believe  such  things."  On  another  occasion, 
hearing  of  some  unworthy  conduct,  he  burst  out — "  Is  there  no 
human  dust-hole  into  which  we  can  sweep  such  fellows  ?" 

Display  of  all  kinds  was  especially  disagreeable  to  him,  and 
he  complains,  in  a  note  to  Ha5'don,  that  "  conversation  is  not  a 
search  after  knowledge,  but  an  endeavor  at  effect — if  Lord  Bacon 
were  alive,  and  to  make  a  remark  in  the  present  day  in  company, 
the  conversation  would  stop  on  a  sudden.  I  am  convinced  of 
this." 

His  health  does  not  seem  to  have  prevented  him  from  indulg- 
ing somewhat  in  that  dissipation  which  is  the  natural  outlet  for 
the  young  energies  of  ardent  temperaments,  unconscious  how 
scanty  a  portion  of  vital  strength  had  been  allotted  to  him  ;  but  a 
strictly  regulated  and  abstinent  life  would  have  appeared  to  him 
pedantic  and  sentimental.  He  did  not,  however,  to  any  extent,  allow 
wine  to  usurp  on  his  intellect,  or  games  of  chance  to  impair  his 
means,  for,  in  his  letters  to  his  brothers,  he  speaks  of  having  drunk  too 
much  as  a  rare  piece  of  joviality,  and  of  having  won  £10  at  cards 
as  a  great  hit.  His  bodily  vigor,  too,  must  at  this  lime  have  been 
considerable,  as  he  signalized  himself,  at  Hampstead,  by  giving 
a  severe  drubbing  to  a  butcher,  whom  he  saw  beating  a  little  boy, 
to  the  enthusiastic  admiration  of  a  crowd  of  bystanders.  Plain, 
manly,  practical  life,  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  free  exercise  of  his 
rich  imagination,  on  the  other,  were  the  ideal  of  his  existence  : 
his  poetry  never  weakened  his  action,  and  his  simple,  every-da/ 
habits  never  coarsened  the  beauty  of  the  world  within  him. 

The  following  letters  of  this  time  are  preserved  : — 

"  Jan.  23,  1818. 
My  Dear  Taylor, 

I  have  spoke  to  Haydon  about  the  drawing.  He 
would  do  it  with  all  his  Art  and  Heart  too,  if  so  I  will  it ;  how- 
ever,  he  has  written  this  to  me ;  but  I  must  tell  you,  first,  he  in- 
tends   painting    a   finished    Picture    from    the    Poem.     Thus    he 


60  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

writes — "  When  I  do  any  thing  for  your  Poem  it  must  be  effec- 
tual— an  lionor  to  both  of  us :  to  hurry  up  a  sketch  for  the  season 
won't  do.  I  think  an  engraving  from  your  head,  from  a  chalk 
drawing  of  mine,  done  with  all  my  might,  to  which  1  would  put 
my  name,  would  answer  Taylor's  idea  better  than  the  other.  In- 
deed, I  am  sui'e  of  it." 

*     *     *     What  think  you  of  this  ?     Let  me  hear.     I  shall 
have  my  second  Book  in  readiness  forthwith. 
Yours  most  sincerely, 

John  Keats. 

"Jan.  23,  1818. 

My  Dear  Bailey, 

Twelve  days  have  passed  since  your  last  reached 
me. — What  has  gone  through  the  myriads  of  human  minds  since 
the  12th  ?  We  talk  of  the  immense  number  of  books,  the  volumes 
ranged  thousands  by  thousands — but  perhaps  more  goes  through 
the  human  intelligence  in  twelve  days  than  ever  was  written. — 
How  has  that,  unfortunate  family  lived  through  the  twelve  ?  One 
saying  of  yours  I  shall  never  forget :  you  may  not  recollect  it,  it 
being,  perhaps,  said  when  you  were  looking  on  the  surface  and 
seeming  of  Humanity  alone,  without  a  thought  of  the  past  or  the 
future,  or  the  deeps  of  good  and  evil.  You  were  at  that  moment 
estranged  from  speculation,  and  I  think  you  have  arguments  ready 
for  the  man  who  would  utter  it  to  you.  This  is  a  formidable 
preface  for  a  simple  thing — merely  you  said,  "  Why  should 
woman  suffer  ?"  Aye,  why  should  she  ?  "  By  heavens,  I'd 
coin  my  very  soul,  and  drop  my  blood  for  drachmas  !"  These 
things  are,  and  he,  who  feels  how  incompetent  the  most  skyey 
knight-errantry  is  to  heal  this  bruised  fairness,  is  like  a  sensitive 
leaf  on  the  hot  hand  of  thought. 

Your  tearing,  my  dear  friend,  a  spiritless  and  gloomy  letter 
up,  to  re-write  to  me,  is  what  I  shall  never  forget — it  was  to  me 
a  real  thing. 

Things  have  happened  lately  of  great  perplexity  ;  you  must 

have  heard  of  them  ;  and retorting  and  recriminating, 

and  parting  for  ever.  Tiie  same  thing  has  happened  between 
and .     It  is  unfortunate  :  men  should  bear  with  ouch 


JOHN  KEATS.  61 


other:  there  lives  not  the  mnii  wlio  may  not  be  cut  up,  aye, 
lashed  to  pieces,  on  his  weakest  side.  The  best  of  men  have  but 
a  portion  of  good  in  them — a  kind  of  spiritual  yeast  in  their 
frames,  which  creates  the  ferment  of  existence — by  which  a  man 
is  propelled  to  act,  and  strive,  and  buffet  with  circumstance.  The 
sure  w-ay,  Bailey,  is  first  to  know  a  man's  faults,  and  then  be 
passive.  If,  after  that,  he  insensibly  draws  you  towards  him, 
then  you  have  no  power  to  break  the  link.  Before  I  felt  in- 
terested in  either or ,  I  was  well-read  in  their  faults  ; 

yet,  knowing  them,  I  have  been  cementing  gradually  with  both. 
I  have  an  affection  for  them  bolh,  for  reasons  almost  opposite  ; 
and  to  both  must  I  of  necessity  cling,  supported  always  by  the 
hope,  that  when  a  little  time,  a  few  years,  shall  have  tried  me 
more  fully  in  their  esteem,  I  may  be  able  to  bring  them  together. 
The  time  must  come,  because  they  have  both  hearts ;  and  they 
will  recollect  the  best  parts  of  each  other,  when  this  gust  is  over- 
blown. 

I  had  a  message  from  you  through  a  letter  to  Jane — I  think, 

about  C .     There  can  be  no  idea  of  binding  until  a  sufficient 

sum  is  sure  for  him  ;  and  even  then  the  thing  should  be  maturely 
considered  by  all  his  helpers.     I  shall  try  my  luck  upon  as  many 

fat  purses  as  I  can  meet  with.     C is  improving  very  fast :  I 

have  the  greater  hopes  of  him  because  he  is  so  slow  in  develop- 
ment. A  man  of  great  executing  powers  at  twenty,  with  a  look 
and  a  speech  the  most  stupid,  is  sure  to  do  something. 

I  have  just  looked  through  the  second  side  of  your  letter.  I 
feel  a  great  content  at  it. 

1  was  at  Hunt's  the  other  day,  and  he  surprised  me  with  a 
real  authenticated  lock  of  Milloii's  Hair.  I  know  you  would  like 
what  I  wrote  thereon,  so  here  it  is — as  they  say  of  a  Sheep  in  a 
Nursery  Book : — 


ON  SEEING  A  LOCK  OF  MILTON'S  HAIR. 

Chief  of  organic  numbers  ! 
Old  Scholar  of  the  Spheres  ! 
Thy  spirit  never  slumbers, 
Put  rolls  about  our  ears 
4 


62  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

For  ever  and  for  ever  ! 
O  what  a  mad  endeavor 

Worketh  He, 
Who  to  thy  sacred  and  ennobled  hearse 
Would  offer  a  burnt  sacrifice  of  verse 

And  melody. 

How  heaven-ward  thou  soundest ! 
Live  Temple  of  sweet  noise, 
And  Discord  unconfoundest, 
Giving  Delight  new  joys, 
And  Pleasure  nobler  pinions  : 
O  where  are  thy  dominions  ? 

Lend  thine  ear 
To  a  young  Delian  oath — aye,  by  thy  soul. 
By  all  that  from  thy  mortal  lips  did  roll. 
And  by  the  kernel  of  thy  earthly  love. 
Beauty  in  things  on  earth  and  things  above, 
I  swear  ! 

When  every  childish  fashion 

Has  vanished  from  my  rhyme. 

Will  I,  gray  gone  in  passion. 

Leave  to  an  after-time. 

Hymning  and  Harmony 
Of  thee  and  of  thy  works,  and  of  thy  life  ; 
But  vain  is  now  the  burning  and  the  strife  : 
Pangs  are  in  vain,  until  I  grow  high-rife 

With  old  Philosophy, 
And  wed  with  glimpses  of  futurity. 

For  many  years  my  offerings  must  be  hushed  ; 
When  I  do  speak,  I'll  think  upon  this  hour. 
Because  I  feel  my  forehead  hot  and  flushed. 
Even  at  the  simplest  vassal  of  thy  power. 

A  lock  of  thy  bright  hair, — 

Sudden  it  came. 
And  I  was  startled  when  I  caught  thy  name 

Coupled  so  unaware  ; 
Yet  at  the  moment  temperate  was  my  blood — 
I  thought  I  had  beheld  it  from  the  flood  ! 

This  I  did  at  Hunt's,  at  his  request.     Perhaps  I  should  have 
done  something  better  alone  and  at  home. 


JOHN  KEATS.  63 


I  have  sent  my  first  book  to  the  press,  and  this  afternoon  shall 
begin  preparing  the  second.  My  visit  to  you  will  be  a  great  spur 
to  quicken  the  proceeding.  I  have  not  had  your  sermon  returned. 
I  long  to  make  it  the  subject  of  a  letter  to  you.  What  do  they 
say  at  Oxford  ? 

I  trust  you  and  Gleig  pass  much  fine  time  together.  Remem- 
ber me  to  him  and  Whitehead.  My  brother  Tom  is  getting 
stronger,  but  his  spitting  of  blood  continues. 

I  sat  down  to  read  "  King  Lear  "  yesterday,  and  felt  the  great- 
ness of  the  thing  up  to  the  writing  of  a  sonnet  preparatory  thereto  : 
in  my  next  you  shall  have  it. 

There  was  some  miserable  reports  of  Rice's  health — I  went, 
and  lo  !  Master  Jemmy  had  been  to  the  play  the  night  before, 
and  was  out  at  the  time.  He  always  comes  on  his  legs  like 
a  cat. 

I  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  Wordsworth.  Hazlitt  is  lectu- 
ring on  Poetry  at  the  Surrey  Institution.  I  shall  be  there  next 
Tuesday. 

Your  most  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

The  assumption,  in  the  above  lines,  of  Beauty  being  "  the 
kernel  "  of  Milton's  love,  rather  accords  with  the  opinion  of  many 
of  Keatb's  friends,  that  at  this  time  he  had  not  studied  "  Paradise 
Lost,"  as  he  did  afterwards.  His  taste  would  naturally  have 
rather  attracted  him  to  those  poems  which  Milton  had  drawn  out 
of  the  heart  of  old  mythology,  "Lycidas"  and  "Comus;"  and 
those  "  two  exquisite  jewels,  hung,  as  it  were,  in  the  ears  of  anti- 
quity," the  "  Penseroso"  and  "  Allegro,"  had  no  doubt  been  well 
enjoyed  ;  but  his  full  appreciation  of  the  great  Poem  was  reserved 
for  the  period  which  produced  "  Hyperion  "  as  clearly  under  Mil- 
tonic  influence,  as  "  Endymion"  is  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Spen- 
ser, Fletcher,  and  Ben  Jonson. 


From  a  letter  to  Mr.  Reynolds. 

Hampstead,  Jan.  2\st,  1818. 
Now  I  purposed  lo  write  to  you  a  serious  poetical  letter,  but  I 
find  that  a  maxim   I  met  with   the  other  day  is  a  just  one :  "On* 


64  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

cause  mieux  quand  on  ne  dit  pas  causons."  I  was  hindered, 
however,  from  my  first  intention  by  a  mere  muslin  handkerchief, 
very  neatly  pinned — but  "  Hence,  vain  deluding,"  &c.  Yet  I 
cannot  write  in  prose  ;  it  is  a  sunshiny  day  and  I  cannot,  so  here 
goes. 

Hence  Burgundy,  Claret,  and  Port, 

Away  with  old  Hock  and  Madeira, 
Too  earthly  ye  are  for  my  sport  ; 

There's  a  beverage  brighter  and  clearer 
Listead  of  a  pitiful  rummer. 
My  wine  overbrims  a  whole  summer  ; 

My  bowl  is  the  sky. 

And  I  drink  at  my  eye, 

Till  I  feel  in  the  brain 

A  Delphian  pain — 

Then  follow,  my  Caius  !  then  follow  : 

On  the  green  of  the  hill 

We  will  drink  our  fill 

Of  golden  sunshine 

Till  our  brains  intertwine 

With  the  glory  and  grace  of  Apollo  ! 

God  of  the  Meridian, 

And  of  the  East  and  West, 
To  thee  my  soul  is  flown. 

And  my  body  is  earthward  press'd. — 
It  is  an  awful  mission, 
A  terrible  division  ; 
And  leaves  a  gulf  austere 
To  be  fill'd  with  worldly  fear. 
Aye,  when  the  soul  is  fled 
To  high  above  our  head. 
Affrighted  do  we  gaze 
After  its  airy  maze. 
As  dotii  a  mother  wild, 
When  her  young  infant  child 
Is  in  an  eagle's  claws — 
And  is  not  this  the  cause 
Of  madness  1 — God  of  Song, 
Thou  bearest  me  along 
Through  sights  I  scarce  can  bear : 
O  lei  nie,  let  me  share 
With  the  hot  lyre  and  thee, 
The  staid  Philosophy. 


JOHN  KEATS.  65 


Temper  my  lonely  hours. 

And  let  me  see  thy  bow'rs 
More  unalarm'd  ! 

My  dear  Reynolds,  you  must  forgive  all  this  ranting  ;  but  the 
fact  is,  I  cannot  write  sense  this  morning ;  however,  you  shall 
have  some.     1  will  copy  out  my  last  sonnet. 

When  I  have  fears  that  I  may  cease  to  be,  &c.* 

I  must  take  a  turn,  and  then  write  to  Teignmouth.  Remem- 
ber me  to  all,  not  excepting  yourself. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Hampstead,  Feb:  3,  1818. 
My  Dear  Reynolds, 

I  thank  you  for  your  dish  of  filberts.  Would 
I  could  get  a  basket  of  them  by  way  of  dessert  every  day  for  the 
sum  of  twopence  (two  sonnets  on  Robin  Hood  sent  by  the  two- 
penny post).  Would  we  were  a  sort  of  ethereal  pigs,  and  turned 
loose  to  feed  upon  spiritual  mast  and  acorns !  which  would  be 
merely  being  a  squirrel  and  feeding  upon  filberts  ;  for  what  is  a 
squirrel  but  an  airy  pig,  or  a  filbert  but  a  sort  of  archangelical 
acorn  ?  About  the  nuts  being  worth  cracking,  all  I  can  say  is, 
that  where  there  are  a  throng  of  delightful  images  ready  drawn, 
simplicity  is  the  only  thing.  It  may  be  said  that  we  ought  to  read 
our  contemporaries,  that  Wordsworth,  &c.,  should  have  their  due 
from  us.  But,  for  the  sake  of  a  few  fine  imaginative  or  domestic 
passages,  are  we  to  be  bullied  into  a  certain  philosophy  engender- 
ed in  the  whims  of  an  egotist  ?  Every  man  has  his  speculations, 
but  every  man  does  not  brood  and  peacock  over  them  till  he 
makes  a  false  coinage  and  deceives  himself.  Many  a  man  can 
travel  to  the  very  bourne  of  Heaven,  and  yet  want  confidence  to 
put  down  his  half-seeing.  Sancho  will  invent  a  journey  heaven- 
ward as  well  as  any  body.  We  hate  poetry  that  has  a  palpable 
design  upon   us,  and,  if  we  do  not  agree,  seems  to  put  its  hand 

*  See  the  "  Literary  Remains." 


66  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

into  its  breeches  pocket.  Poetry  should  be  great  and  unobtrusive, 
a  thing  which  enters  into  one's  soul,  and  does  not  startle  it  or 
amaze  it  with  itself,  but  with  its  subject.  How  beautiful  are  the 
retired  flowers !  How  would  they  lose  their  beauty  were  they  to 
throng  into  the  highway,  crying  out,  "  Admire  me,  I  am  a  violet ! 
Dote  upon  me,  I  am  a  primrose!"  Modern  poets  differ  from  the 
Elizabethans  in  this  :  each  of  the  moderns,  like  an  Elector  of 
Hanover,  governs  his  petty  state,  and  knows  hew  many  straws  are 
swept  daily  from  the  causeways  in  all  his  dominions,  aud  has  a 
continual  itching  that  all  the  housewives  should  have  their  coppers 
well  scoured.  The  ancients  were  Emperors  of  vast  provinces ; 
they  had  only  heard  of  the  remote  ones,  and  scarcely  cared  to 
visit  them.  I  will  cut  all  this.  I  will  have  no  more  of  Words- 
worth or  Hunt  in  particular.  Why  should  we  be  of  the  tribe  of 
Manasseh,  when  we  can  wander  with  Esau  ?  Why  should  we 
kick  against  the  pricks  when  we  can  walk  on  roses  ?  Why  should 
we  be  owls,  when  we  can  be  eagles  ?  Why  be  teased  with  "  nice- 
eyed  wagtails,"  when  we  have  in  sight  "  the  cherub  Contempla- 
tion ?"  Why  with  Wordsworth's  "  Matthew  with  a  bough  of  wild- 
ing  in  his  hand,"  when  we  can  have  Jacques  "  under  an  oak," 
&;c.  ?  The  secret  of  the  "  bough  of  wilding  "  will  run  through 
your  head  faster  than  I  can  write  it.  Old  Matthew  spoke  to  him 
some  years  ago  on  some  nothing,  and  because  he,  happens  in  an 
evening  walk  to  imagine  the  figure  of  the  old  man,  he  must  stamp 
it  down  in  black  and  white,  and  it  is  henceforth  sacred.  I  don't 
mean  to  deny  Wordsworth's  grandeur  and  Hunt's  merit,  but  I  mean 
to  say  we  need  not  be  teased  with  grandeur  and  merit  when  we 
can  have  them  uncontaminated  and  unobtrusive.  Let  us  have  the 
old  Poets  and  Robin  Hood.  Your  letter  and  its  sonnets  gave  me 
more  pleasure  than  will  the  Fourth  Book  of  "  Childe  Harold," 
and  the  whole  of  any  body's  life  and  opinions. 

In  return  for  your  dish  of  filberts,  I  have  gathered  a  few  cat- 
kins.*    I  hope  they'll  look  pretty. 

"  No,  those  clays  are  gone  away,"  &c. 

*  Mr.  Reynolds  had  inclosed   Keats  some   Sonnets  on  Robin  Hood,  to 
which  these  fine  lines  are  an  answer. 


JOHN  KEATS.  67 


I  hope  you  will  like  them — they  are  at  least  written  in  the 
spirit  of  outlawry.     Here  are  the  Mermaid  lines: — 

"  Souls  of  Poets  dead  and  gone,"  &.c. 

In  the  hope  that  these  scribblings  will  be  some  amusement  for 
you  this  evening,  I  remain,  copying  on  the  hill, 

Your  sincere  friend  and  co-scribbler, 

John  Keats. 

Keats  was  perhaps  unconsciously  swayed  in  his  estimate  of 
Wordsworth  at  this  moment,  by  an  incident  which  had  occurred  at 
Mr.  Haydon's.  The  young  Poet  had  been  induced  to  repeat  to 
the  elder  the  fine  "  Hymn  to  Pan,"  out  of  "  Endymion,"  which 
Shelley,  who  did  not  much  like  the  poem,  used  to  speak  of  as 
affording  the  "  surest  promise  of  ultimate  excellence :"  Words- 
worth only  remarked,  "  it  was  a  pretty  piece  of  Paganism."  The 
mature  and  philosophic  genius,  penetrated  with  Christian  associa- 
tions, probably  intended  some  slight  rebuke  to  his  youthful  com- 
peer, whom  he  saw  absorbed  in  an  order  of  ideas,  that  to  him  ap- 
peared merely  sensuous,  and  would  have  desired  that  the  bright 
traits  of  Greek  mythology  should  be  sobered  down  by  a  graver 
faith,  as  in  his  own  "  Dion  "  and  "  Laodamia  ;"  but,  assuredly, 
the  phrase  could  not  have  been  meant  contemptuously,  as  Keats 
took  it,  and  was  far  more  annoyed  at  it  than  at  pages  of  "  Quar- 
terly "  abuse,  or  "  Blackwood's  "   ridicule. 

[Postmark,  Hampstead.     Feb.  19,  1818.] 

My  Dear  Reynolds, 

I  had  an  idea  that  a  man  might  pass  a  very  pleasant 
life  in  this  manner — let  him  on  a  certain  day  read  a  certain  page 
of  full  poesy  or  distilled  prose,  and  let  him  wander  with  it,  and 
muse  upon  it,  and  reflect  upon  it,  and  bring  home  to  it,  and  pro- 
phesy upon  it,  and  dream  upon  it,  until  it  becomes  stale.  But 
will  it  do  so?  Never.  When  man  has  arrived  at  a  certain 
ripeness  of  intellect,  any  one  grand  and  spiritual  passage  serves 
him  as  a  starting-post  towards  all  "the  two-and-thirty  palaces." 
How  happy  is  such   a  voyage  of  conception,  what  delicious  dili- 


68  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

gent  indolence !  A  doze  upon  a  sofa  does  not  hinder  it,  and  a  nap 
upon  clover  engenders  etiiereal  finger-pointings  ;  the  pratile  of  a 
child  gives  it  wings,  and  the  converse  of  middle-age  a  strength  to 
beat  tl)em  ;  a  strain  of  music  conducts  to  "  an  odd  angle  of  the 
Isle,"  and  when  the  leaves  whisper,  it  puts  a  girdle  round  the 
earth.  Nor  will  this  sparing  touch  of  noble  books  be  any  irreve- 
rence to  their  writers  ;  for  perhaps  the  honors  paid  by  man  are 
trifles  in  comparison  to  the  benefit  done  by  great  works  to  the 
"spirit  and  pulse  of  good"  by  their  mere  passive  existence.  Me- 
mory should  not  be  called  knowledge.  Many  have  original  minds 
wlio  do  not  think  it :  they  are  led  away  by  custom.  Now  it  ap- 
pears to  me  that  almost  any  man  may,  like  the  spider,  spin  from 
his  own  inwards,  his  own  airy  citadel.  The  points  of  leaves  and 
twigs  on  which  the  spider  begins  her  work  are  few,  and  she  fills 
the  air  with  a  beautiful  circuiting.  Man  should  be  content  with 
as  few  points  to  tip  with  the  fine  web  of  his  soul,  and  weave  a 
tapestry  empyrean — full  of  symbols  for  his  spiritual  eye,  of  soft- 
ness for  his  spiritual  touch,  of  space  for  his  wanderings,  of  dis- 
tinctness for  his  luxury.  But  the  minds  of  mortals  are  so  differ- 
ent, and  bent  on  such  diverse  journeys,  that  it  may  at  first  appear 
impossible  for  any  common  taste  and  fellowship  to  exist  between 
two  or  three  under  these  suppositions.  It  is  however  quite  the 
contrary.  Minds  would  leave  each  other  in  contrary  directions, 
traverse  each  other  in  numberless  points,  and  at  last  greet  each 
other  at  the  journey's  end.  An  old  man  and  a  child  would  talk 
together,  and  the  old  man  be  led  on  his  path  and  the  child  left 
thinking.  Man  should  not  dispute  or  assert  but  whisper  results 
to  his  neighbor,  and  thus  by  every  germ  of  spirit  sucking  the  sap 
from  mould  ethereal,  every  human  [being]  might  become  great, 
and  humanity,  instead  of  being  a  wide  heath  of  furze  and  briers, 
with  here  and  there  a  remote  oak  or  pine,  would  become  a  grand 
democracy  of  forest  trees !  It  has  been  an  old  comparison  for 
our  urging  on — the  bee-hive ;  however,  it  seems  to  me  tliat  we 
should  rather  be  the  flower  than  the  bee.  For  it  is  a  false  notion 
that  more  is  gained  by  receiving  than  giving — no,  the  receiver 
and  the  giver  are  equal  in  their  benefits.  The  flower,  l  doubt 
not,  receives  a  fair  guerdon  from  the  bee.  Its  leaves  blush  deeper 
in  the  next  spring.     And  who  shall   say,  between    man   and  wo- 


JOHN-  KEATS.  69 


man,  which  is  the  most  delighted  ?  Now  it  is  more  noble  to  sit 
like  Jove  than  to  fly  like  Mercury  : — let  us  not  therefore  go  hur- 
rying about  and  collecting  honey,  bee-like  buzzing  here  and  there 
for  a  knowledge  of  what  is  to  be  arrived  at ;  but  let  us  open  our 
leaves  like  a  flower,  and  be  passive  and  receptive,  budding  pa- 
tiently under  the  eye  of  Apollo,  and  taking  hints  from  every  noble 
insect  that  favors  us  with  a  visit.  Sap  will  be  given  us  for  meat, 
and  dew  for  drink. 

I  was  led  into  these  thoughts,  my  dear  Reynolds,  by  the  beauty 
of  the  morning  operating  on  a  sense  of  idleness.  I  have  not  read 
any  books — the  morning  said  I  was  right — I  had  no  idea  but  of 
the  morning,  and  the  thrush  said  I  was  right — seeming  to  say, 

"  O  thou  whose  face  hath  felt  the  Winter's  wind. 
Whose  eye  hath  seen  the  snow-clouds  hung  in  mist. 
And  the  black  elm-tops  among  the  freezing  stars  ; 
To  thee  the  Spring  will  be  a  harvest-time. 
O  thou  !  whose  only  book  hath  been  the  light 
Of  supreme  darkness  which  thou  feddest  on 
Night  after  night,  when  Phcebus  was  away, 
To  thee  the  Spring  will  be  a  triple  morn. 
O  fret  not  after  knowledge  ! — I  have  none. 
And  yet  my  song  comes  native  with  the  warmth. 
O  fret  not  after  knowledge  I— I  have  none. 
And  yet  the  Evening  listens.     He  who  saddens 
At  thought  of  idleness  cannot  be  idle, 
And  he's  awake  who  thinks  himself  asleep." 

Now  1  am  sensible  all  this  is  a  mere  sophistication,  (however 
it  may  neighbor  to  any  truth)  to  excuse  my  own  indulgence.  So 
I  will  not  deceive  myself  that  man  should  be  equal  with  Jove — 
but  think  himself  very  well  off  as  a  sort  of  scullion-mercury,  or 
even  a  humble-bee.  It  is  no  matter  whether  I  am  right  or  wrong, 
either  one  way  or  another,  if  there  is  sufficient  to  lift  a  little  time 
from  your  shoulders. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

With  his  brothers  at  Teignmouth  he  kept  up  an  affectionate 
correspondence,  of  which  some  specimens  remain,  and  he  visited 
them   thrice   in    the   early  part   of  the   year.      The  "  Champion" 

4* 


70  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

herein  mentioned  was  a  periodical  of  considerable  merit,  in  which 
Mr.  Reynolds  was  engaged,  and  the  article  on  Kean  alluded  to, 
as  well  as  a  later  criticism  of  Keats  on  the  same  actor,  are  well 
worth  preserving,  both  for  their  acute  appreciation  of  a  remarka- 
ble artist,  and  for  their  evidence  that  the  genius  and  habit  of  poet- 
ry had  produced  its  customary  etlect  of  making  the  Poet  a  good 
writer  of  prose.  Mr.  Brown,  whose  name  now  frequently  occurs, 
was  a  retired  merchant,  who  had  been  the  neighbor  of  the  Keats's 
since  the  summer,  and  his  congeniality  of  taStes  and  benevolence 
of  disposition  had  made  them  intimates  and  friends.  It  will  be 
often  repeated  in  these  pages — the  oftener  as  they  advance  ;  and, 
in  unison  with  that  of  the  painter  Severn,  will  close  the  series  of 
honorable  friendships  associated  with  a  Poet's  fame. 

Hampstead,  22d  December,  1817. 
My  Dear  Brothers, 

I  must  crave  your  pardon  for  not  having  written 
ere  this.  *  *  *  I  saw  Kean  return  to  the  public  in  "  Richard 
III,"  and  finely  he  did  it,  and,  at  the  request  of  Reynolds,  I  went 
to  criticise  his  Duke.  The  critique  is  in  to-day's  "  Champion," 
which  I  send  you,  with  the  "  Examiner,"  in  which  you  will  find 
very  proper  lamentation  on  the  obsoletion  of  Christmas  gambols 
and  pastimes  :  but  it  was  mixed  up  with  so  much  egotism  of  that 
driveling  nature  that  all  pleasure  is  entirely  lost.  Hone,  the 
publisher's  trial,  you  must  find  very  amusing,  and,  as  English- 
men, very  encouraging :  liis  Nol.  Guilty  is  a  thing,  which  not  to 
have  been,  would  have  dulled  still  more  Liberty's  emblazoning. 
Lord  EUenborough  has  been  paid  in  his  own  coin.  VVooler  and 
Hone  have  done  us  essential  service.  I  have  had  two  very  pleas- 
ant evenings  with  Dilke,  yesterday  and  to-day,  and  am  at  this 
moment  just  come  from  him,  and  feel  in  the  humor  to  go  on  with 
this,  begun  in  the  morning,  and  from  which  he  came  to  fetch  me. 
I  spent  Friday  evening  with  Wells,  and  went  next  morning  to  see 
"  Death  on  the  Pale  Horse."  It  is  a  wonderful  picture,  when 
West's  age  is  considered  ;  but  there  is  nothing  to  be  intense  upon, 
no  women  one  feels  mad  to  kiss,  no  face  swelling  into  reality. 
The  excellence  of  every  art  is  its  intensity,  capable  of  making  all 
disagreeables  evaporate  from  their  being  in  close  relationship  with 


JOHN  KEATS.  71 


beaaty  and  truth.  Examine  "  King  Lear,"  and  you  will  find  this 
exemplified  throughout :  but  in  this  picture  we  have  unpleasant- 
ness without  any  momentous  depths  of  speculation  excited,  in 
which  to  bury  its  repulsiveness.  The  picture  is  larger  than 
"Christ  Rejected." 

I  dined  with  Haydon  the  Sunday  after  you  left,  and  had  a 
very  pleasant  day.  I  dined  too  (for  I  have  been  out  too  much 
lately)  with  Horace  Smith,  and  met  his  two  brothers,  with  Hill 
and  Kingston,  and  one  Du  Bois.  They  only  served  to  convince 
me  how  superior  humor  is  to  wit,  in  respect  to  enjoyment.  These 
men  say  things  which  make  one  start,  without  making  one  feel ; 
they  are  all  alike  ;  their  manners  are  alike  ;  they  all  know  fash- 
ionables ;  they  have  all  a  mannerism  in  their  very  eating  and 
drinking,  in  their  mere  handling  a  decanter.  They  talked 
of  Kean  and  his  low  company.  "  Would  I  were  with  that  com- 
pany instead  of  yours,"  said  J  to  myself!  I  know  such  like  ac- 
quaintance will  never  do  for  me,  and  yet  I  am  going  to  Reynolds 
on  Wednesday.  Brown  and  Dilke  walked  with  me  and  back 
from  the  Christmas  pantomime-  I  had  not  a  dispute,  but  a  dis- 
quisition, with  Dilke  upon  various  subjects;  several  things  dove- 
tailed in  my  mind,  and  at  once  it  struck  me  what  quality  went  to 
form  a  man  of  achievement,  especially  in  literature,  and  which 
Shakspeare  possessed  so  enormously — I  mean  negative  capability, 
that  is,  when  a  man  is  capable  of  being  in  uncertainties,  myste- 
ries, doubts,  without  any  irritable  reaching  after  fact  and  reason. 
Coleridge,  for  instance,  would  let  go  by  a  fine  isolated  verisimili- 
tude caught  from  the  penetralium  of  Mystery,  from  being  incapa- 
ble of  remaining  content  with  half-knowledge.  This  pursued 
through  volumes  would  perhaps  take  us  no  further  than  this,  that 
with  a  great  Poet  the  sense  of  Beauty  overcomes  every  other  con- 
sideration, or  rather  obliterates  all  consideration.  Shelley's  poem 
is  out,  and  there  are  words  about  its  being  objected  to  as  much  as 
"  Queen  Mab"  was.     Poor  Shelley,  I  think  he  has  his  quota  of 

good  qualities Write  soon  to  your  most  sincere 

friend  and  affectionate  brother,  John. 


72  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

23rf  January,  1818. 

My  Dear  Brothers, 

I  was  thinking  what  hindered  me  from  writing  so 
long,  for  I  have  so  many  things  to  say  to  you,  and  know  not  where 
to  begin.  It  shall  be  upon  a  thing  most  interesting  to  you,  my  Poem. 
Well  !  I  have  given  the  first  Book  to  Taylor  ;  he  seemed  more 
than  satisfied  with  it,  and,  to  my  surprise,  proposed  publishing  il 
in  quarto,  if  Haydon  could  make  a  drawing  of  some  event  therein, 
for  a  frontispiece.  I  called  on  Haydon.  He  said  he  would  do 
any  thing  I  liked,  but  said  he  would  rather  paint  a  finished  picture 
from  it,  which  he  seems  eager  to  do.  This,  in  a  year  or  two,  will 
be  a  glorious  thing  for  us  ;  and  it  will  be,  for  Haydon  is  struck 
with  the  first  Book.  I  left  Haydon,  and  the  next  day  received  a 
letter  from  him,  proposing  to  make,  as  he  says,  with  all  his  might,  a 
finished  chalk  sketch  of  my  head,  to  be  engraved  in  the  first  style, 
and  put  at  the  head  of  my  Poem,  saying,  at  the  same  time,  he  had 
never  done  the  thing  for  any  human  being,  and  that  it  must  have 
considerable  effect,  as  he  will  put  his  name  to  it.  I  begin  to-day 
to  copy  my  second  Book  :  "  thus  far  into  the  bowels  of  the  land." 
You  shall  hear  whether  it  will  be  quarto  or  non-quarto,  picture  or 
non-picture.  Leigh  Hunt  1  showed  my  first  Book  to.  He  allows 
it  not  much  merit  as  a  whole ;  says  it  is  unnatural,  and  made  ten 
objections  to  it,  in  the  mere  skimming  over.  He  says  the  conver- 
sation is  unnatural,  and  too  high-flown  for  Brother  and  Sister; 
says  it  should  be  simple, — forgetting,  do  ye  mind,  that  they  are 
both  overshadowed  by  a  supernatural  Power,  and  of  force  could 
not  speak  like  Francosca,  in  the  "  Rimini."  He  must  first  prove 
that  Caliban's  poetry  is  unnatural.  This,  with  me,  completely 
overturns  his  objections.  The  fact  is,  he  and  Shelley  are  hurt, 
and  perhaps  justly,  at  my  not  having  showed  them  the  affair  offi- 
ciously  ;  and,  from  several  hints  I  had  had,  they  appear  much 
disposed  to  dissect  and  anatomize  any  ti'ip  or  slip  I  may  have 
made. — But  who's  afraid  ?  Ay  !  Tom  !  Demme  if  I  am.  I  went 
last  Tuesday,  an  hour  too  late,  to  Hazlitt's  Lecture  on  Poetry ; 
got  there  just  as  they  were  coming  out,  when  all  these  pounced 
upon  me : — Hazlitt,  John  Hunt  and  Son,  Wells,  Bewick,  all  the 
Landseers,  Bob  Harris,  aye  and  more. 

I  think  a  little  change  has  taken  place  in  my  intellect  lately; 


JOHN  KEATS.  73 


I  cannot  bear  to  be  uninterested  or  unemployed,  I,  who  for  so  long 
a  time  have  been  addicted  to  passiveness.  Nothing  is  finer  for 
the  purposes  of  great  productions  than  a  very  gradual  ripening  of 
the  intellectual  powers.  As  an  instance  of  this — observe — I  sal- 
down  yesterday  to  read  "  King  Lear  "  once  again  :  the  thing  ap- 
peared to  demand  the  prologue  of  a  sonnet.  I  wrote  it,  and  began 
to  read.     (I  know  you  would  like  to  see  it.) 

ON  SITTING  DOWN  TO  RF:AD  "KING  LEAR"  ONCE  AGAIN. 

O  golden-tongued  Romance  with  serene  lute  I 
Fair  plumed  Syren  !   Queen  !  if  far  away  ! 
Leave  melodizing  on  this  wintry  day, 
Shut  up  thine  olden  volume,  and  be  mute. 
Adieu  !  for  once  again  the  fierce  dispute. 
Betwixt  Hell  torment  and  impassioned  clay, 
Must  I  burn  through  ;  once  more  assay 
The  bitter  sweet  of  this  Shnkspearian  fruit. 
Chief  Poet!  and  ye  clouds  of  Albion, 
Begetters  of  our  deep  eternal   theme, 
When  I  am  through  the  old  oak  forest  gone, 
Let  me  not  wander  in  a  barren  dream. 
But  when  I  am  consumed  wiih  the  Fire, 
Give  me  new  Phoenix-wings  to  fly  at  my  desire. 

So  you  .see  I  am  getting  at  it  with  a  sort  of  determination  and 
strength,  though,  verily,  I  do  not  feel  it  at  this  moment :  this  is  my 
fourth  letter  this  morning,  and  I  feel  rather  tired,  and  my  head 
rather  swimming — so  1  will  leave  it  open  till  to-morrow's  post. 

I  am  in  the  habit  of  taking  my  papers  to  Dilke's  and  copying 
there  ;  so  I  chat  and  proceed  at  the  same  time.  I  iiave  been  there 
at  my  work  this  evening,  and  the  walk  over  the  Heath  takes  off 
all  sleep,  so  I  will  evfu  proceed  with  you.      *  *  * 

Constable,  the  book.seller,  has  offered  Reynolds  ten  guineas  a  sheet 
to  write  for  his  Magazine.  It  is  an  Edinburgh  one,  which  Black- 
wood's started  up  in  opposition  to.  Hunt  said  he  was  nearly  sure 
that  the  "Cockney  School  "   was  written  by  Scott;*    so  you  are 

*  There  seems  to  be  no  foundation  for  this  assertion. 


74  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

right,  Tom  !     There  are  no  more  little  bits  of  news  I  can  remem- 
ber at  present. 

I  remain, 

My  dear  brothers,  your  affectionate  brother, 

John. 

Hampstead,  February  16,  [1818.] 
My  Dear  Brothers, 

When  once  a  man  delays  a  letter  beyond  the 
proper  time,  he  delays  it  longer,  for  one  or  two  reasons  ;  first,  be- 
cause he  must  begin  in  a  very  common-place  style,  that  is  to  say, 
with  an  excuse ;  and  secondly,  things  and  circumstances  become 
so  jumbled  in  his  mind,  that  he  knows  not  what,  or  what  not,  he 
has  said  in  his  last.  I  shall  visit  you  as  soon  as  I  have  copied  my 
Poem  all  out.  I  am  now  much  beforehand  with  the  printers ; 
they  have  done  none  yet,  and  I  am  half  afraid  they  will  let  half 
the  season  by  before  the  printing.  I  am  determined  they  shall 
not  trouble  me  when  I  have  copied  it  all.  Hazlitt's  last  lecture 
was  on  Thomson,  Covvper,  and  Crabbe.  He  praised  Thomson 
and  Cowper,  but  he  gave  Crabbe  an  unmerciful  licking.  I  saw 
Fazio  the  first  night ;  it  hung  rather  heavily  on  me.  I  am  in  the 
high  way  of  being  introduced  to  a  squad  of  people,  Peter  Pindar, 
Mrs.  Opie,  Mrs.  Scott.  Mr.  Robinson,  a  great  friend  of  Cole- 
ridge's, called  on  me.  Richards  tells  me  that  my  Poems  are 
known  in  the  west  country,  and  that  he  saw  a  very  clever  copy 
of  verses  headed  with  a  motto  from  my  sonnet  to  George.  Ho- 
nors rush  so  thickly  upon  me  that  I  shall  not  be  able  to  bear  up 
against  tliem.  What  think  you — am  I  to  be  crowned  in  the  Capi- 
tol ?  Am  I  to  be  made  a  Mandarin  ?  No !  I  am  to  be  invited, 
Mrs.  Hunt  tells  me,  to  a  party  at  Ollier's,  to  keep  Shakspeare's 
birth-day.  Shakspeare  would  stare  to  see  me  there.  The  Wednes- 
day before  last,  Shelley,  Hunt,  and  1,  wrote  each  a  sonnet  on  the 
river  Nile  :  some  day  you  shall  read  them  all.  I  saw  a  sheet  of 
"  Endymion,"  and  have  all  reason  to  suppose  they  will  soon  get 
it  done  ;  there  shall  be  nothing  wanting  on  my  part.  I  have  been 
writing,  at  intervals,  many  songs  and  sonnets,  and  I  long  to  be  at 
Teignmouth  to  read  them  over  to  you  ;  however,  I  think  I  had 
better  wait  till  this  book  is  off  my  mind  ;  it  will  not  be  long  first. 


JOHN  KEATS.  75 


Reynolds  has  been  writing  two  very  capital  articles,   in  the 
"Yellow  Dwarf,"  on  Popular  Preachers. 

Your  most  affectionate  brother, 

John. 


•     These  are  the  three  sonnets  on  the  Nile  here  alluded  to,   and 
very  characteristic  they  are. 

TO  THE  NILE. 

Son  of  the  old  moon-mountains  African  ! 
Stream  of  the  Pyramid  and  Crocodile  ! 
We  call  thee  fruitful,  and  that  very  while 
A  desert  fills  our  seeing's  inward  span : 
Nurse  of  swart  nations  since  the  world  began, 
Art  thou  so  fruitful  ?  or  dost  thou  beguile 
Those  men  to  honor  thee,  who,  worn  with  toil. 
Rest  them  a  space  'twixt  Cairo  and  Decan  ? 
0  may  dark  fancies  err  !     They  surely  do  ; 
'Tis  ignorance  that  makes  a  barren  waste 
Of  all  beyond  itself.     Thou  dost  bedew 
Green  rushes  like  our  rivers,  and  dost  taste 
The  pleasant  sun-rise.     Green  isles  hast  thou  too. 
And  to  the  sea  as  happily  dost  haste. 

J.  K. 


THE   NILE. 

It  flows  through  old  hush'd  Egypt  and  its  sands, 

Like  some  grave  mighty  thought  threading  a  dream  ; 

And  times  and  things,  as  in  that  vision,  seem 

Keeping  along  it  their  eternal  stands, — 

Caves,  pillars,  pyramids,  the  shepherd  bands 

That  roam'd  through  the  young  earth,  the  glory  extreme 

Of  high  Sesostris,  and  that  southern  beam, 

The  laughing  queen  that  caught  the  world's  great  hands. 

Then  comes  a  mightier  silence,  stern  and  strong. 
As  of  a  world  left  empty  of  its  throng. 


76  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

And  the  void  weighs  on  us  ;  and  then  we  wake. 
And  hear  the  frightful  stream  lapsing  along 
'Twixi  villages,  and  think  how  we  shall  take 
Our  own  calm  journey  on  for  human  sake. 


L.  H. 


OZYMANDIAS. 


I  saw  a  traveler  from  an  antique  land,  ^■ 

Who  said  : — Two  vast  and  trunkless  legs  of  stone 
Stand  in  the  desert.     Near  them,  on  the  sand, 
Half  sunk,  a  shattei-'d  visage  lies,  whose  frown. 
And  wrinkled  lip,  and  sneer  of  cold  command. 
Tell  that  its  sculptor  well  those  passions  read, 
Which  yet  survive,  stamp'd  on  these  lifeless  things, 
The  hand  that  mock'd  them  and  the  heart  that  fed  ; 

And  on  the  pedestal  these  words  appear  : — 
"  My  name  is  Ozymandias,  King  of  Kings: 
Look  on  my  works,  ye  Mighty,  and  despair!" 
Nothing  beside  remains.  Round  the  decay 
Of  that  colossal  wreck,  boundless  and  bare. 
The  lone  and  level  sands  stretch  Jar  away. 

P.  B.  S. 

Hampstead,  February  21,  [1818  ] 
My  Dear  Brothers, 

I  am  extremely  sorry  to  have  given  you  so 
much  uneasiness  by  not  writing ;  however,  you  Itnow  good  news 
is  no  news,  or  vice  versa.  I  do  not  likcj  to  write  a  short  letter  to 
you,  or  you  would  have  had  one  long  before.  The  weather,  al- 
though  boisterous  to-day,  has  been  very  much  milder,  and  I  think 
Devonshire  is  not  the  last  place  to  receive  a  temperate  change.  I 
have  been  abominably  idle  ever  since  you  left,  but  have  just 
turned  over  a  new  leaf,  and  used  as  a  marker  a  letter  of  excuse 
to  an  invitation  from  Horace  Smith.  I  received  a  letter  the  other 
day  froiTi  Haydon,  in  which  he  says,  his  "  Essays  on  the  Elgin 
Marbles  "  are  being  translated  into  Italian,  the  which  he  superin- 
tends. I  did  not  mention  that  I  had  seen  the  British  Gallery  ; 
there  are  some  nice  things  by  Stark,  and  "  Bathsheba,"  by  Wil- 
kie,  which  is  condemned.     1  could  not  bear  Alston's  "  Uriel." 


JOHN  KEATS.  77 


The  thrushes  and  blackbird.--  have  been  singing  nic  into  an  idea 
that  it  was  spring,  and  almost  that  leaves  were  on  the  trees.  So 
that  black  clouds  and  boisterous  winds  seem  to  have  mustered  and 
collected  in  full  divan,  for  the  purpose  of  convincing  me  to  the 
contrary.  Taylor  says  my  poem  shall  be  out  in  a  month.  *  *  * 
The  thrushes  are  singing  now  as  if  they  would  speak  to  the  winds, 
because  their  big  brother  Jack — the  Spring — was  not  far  off.  I 
am  reading  Voltaire  and  Gibbon,  although  1  wrote  to  Reynolds 
tTie  other  day  to  prove  reading  of  no  use.  I  have  not  seen  Hunt 
since.  I  am  a  good  deal  with  Dilke  and  Brown ;  they  are  kind 
to  me.  I  don't  think  I  could  stop  in  Hampstead  but  for  their 
neighborhood.  I  hear  Hazlitt's  lectures  regularly :  his  last  was 
on  Gray,  Collins,  Young,  &;c.,  and  he  gave  a  very  fine  piece  of 
discriminating  criticism  on  Swift,  Voltaire,  and  Rabelais.  I  was 
very  disappointed  at  his  treatment  of  Chatterton.  I  generally 
meet  with  many  I  know  there.  Lord  Byron's  Fourth  Canto  is 
expected  out,  and  I  heard  somewhere,  that  VV alter  Scott  has  a 
new  poem  in  readiness.  *  *  *  j  have  not  yet  read  Shelley's 
poem  :  T  do  not  suppose  you  have  it  yet  at  the  Teignmouth  libra- 
ries. These  double  letters  must  come  rather  heavy ;  I  hope  you 
have  a  moderate  portion  of  cash,  but  don't  fret  at  all,  if  you  have 
not — Lord  !  I  intend  to  play  at  cut  and  run  as  well  as  Falstaff, 
that  is  to  say,  before  he  got  so  lusty. 

I  remain,  praying  for  your  health,  my  dear  brothers, 

Your  affectionate  brother, 
John. 

A  lady,  whose  feminine  acuteness  of  perception  is  only 
equaled  by  the  vigor  of  her  understanding,  tells  me  she  distinctly 
remembers  Keats  as  he  appeared  at  this  lime  at  Hazlitt's  lectures. 
"  His  eyes  were  large  and  blue,  his  hair  auburn  ;  he  wore  it 
divided  down  the  centre,  and  it  fell  in  rich  masses  on  each  side  of 
his  face ;  his  mouth  was  full,  and  less  intellectual  than  his  other 
features.  His  countenance  lives  in  my  mind  as  one  of  singular 
beauty  and  brightness — it  had  an  expression  as  if  he  had  been 
looking  on  some  glorious  sight.  The  shape  of  his  face  had  not 
the  squareness  of  a  man's,  but  more  like  some  women's  faces  I 
have  seen — it  was  so  wide  over  the  forehead  and  so  small   at  the 


78  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

chin.     He  seemed   in   perfect  health,  and   with  life  offering  all 
things  that  were  precious  to  him." 

Keats  had  lately  vindicated  those  "  who  delight  in  sensation  " 
against  those  who  "  hunger  after  Truth,"  and  that,  no  doubt,  was 
the  tendency  of  his  nature.  But  it  is  most  interesting  to  observe 
how  this  dangerous  inclination  was  in  him  continually  balanced 
and  modified  by  the  purest  appreciation  of  moral  excellence,  how 
far  he  was  from  taking  the  sphere  he  loved  best  to  ^Iwell  in  for  the 
whole  or  even  the  best  of  creation.  Never  have  words  more 
effectively  expressed  the  conviction  of  the  superiority  of  virtue 
above  beauty  than  those  in  the  following  letter — never  has  a  poet 
more  devoutly  submitted  the  glory  of  imagination  to  the  power  of 
conscience. 

Hampstead,  April  21,  1818. 
My  Dear  Brothers, 

I  am  certain,  I  think,  of  having  a  letter  to-morrow 
morning ;  for  I  expected  one  so  much  this  morning,  having  been 
in  town  two  days,  at  the  end  of  which  my  expectations  began  to 
get  up  a  little.  I  found  two  on  the  table,  one  from  Bailey  and 
one  from  Haydon.  I  am  quite  perplexed  in  a  world  of  doubts 
and  fancies  ;  there  is  nothing  stable  in  the  world ;  uproar's  your 
only  music.  I  don't  mean  to  include  Bailey  in  this,  and  so  I  dis- 
miss him  from  this,  with  all  the  opprobrium  he  deserves;  that  is, 
in  so  many  words,  he  is  one  of  the  noblest  men  alive  at  the  pre- 
sent day.  In  a  note  to  Haydon,  about  a  M'eek  ago  (which  I  wrote 
with  a  full  sense  of  what  he  had  done,  and  how  he  had  never 
manifested  any  little  mean  drawback  in  his  value  of  me),  I  said, 
if  there  were  three  things  superior  in  the  modern  world,  they  were 
"  The  Excursion,"  "  Haydon's  Pictures,"  and  Hazlitt's  depth  of 
Taste.  So  I  believe — not  thus  speaking  with  any  poor  vanity — 
that  works  of  genius  are  the  first  things  in  this  world.  No  !  for 
that  sort  of  probity  and  disinterestedness  which  such  men  as  Bai- 
ley possess  does  hold  and  grasp  the  tip-top  of  any  spiritual  honors 
that  can  be  paid  to  anything  in  this  world.  And,  moreover,  hav- 
ing this  feeling  at  this  present  come  over  me  in  its  full  force,  I  sat 
down  to  write  to  you  with  a  grateful  heart,  in  that  I  had  not  a 
brother  who  did  not  feel   and   credit  me   for  a  deeper  feeling  and 


JOHN  KEATS.  79 


devotion  for  his  uprightness,  than  for  any  marks  of  genius  how- 
ever splendid.  I  have  just  finished  the  revision  of  my  first  book, 
and  shall  take  it  to  Taylor's  to-morrow. 

Your  most  affectionate  brother, 

John. 

The  correction  and  publication  of"  Endymion"  were  the  chief 
occupations  of  this  half  year,  and  naturally  furnish  much  of  the 
matter  for  Keats's  correspondence.  The  "  Axioms"  in  the  second 
letter  to  Mr.  Taylor,  his  publisher,  express  with  wonderful  vigor 
and  conciseness  the  Poet's  notion  of  his  own  art,  and  are  the  more 
interesting  as  they  contain  principles  which  superficial  readers 
might  have  imagined  he  would  have  been  the  first  to  disregard 
and  violate. 


[Postmark,  30  Jan.  1818.     Hampstead.] 

My  Dear  Taylor, 

These  lines,   as  they   now  stand,   about    "  happiness," 
have  rung  in  my  ears  like  "  a  chime  a  mending."     See  here : 

"  Behold 
Wherein  lies  happiness,  Peona  ?  fold,"  &c. 

It  appears  to  me  the  very  contrary  of  "  blessed."  I  hope  this 
will  appear  to  you  more  eligible  : 

"  Wherein  lies  happiness  1     In  that  which  becks 
Our  ready  minds  to  fellowship  divine  ; 
A  fellowship  with   essence,  tdl  we  shine 
Full  alchemized  and  free  of  space      Behold 
The  clear  religion  of  Heaven — Peona  !  fold,"  &c. 

You  must  indulge  me  by  putting  this  in  ;  for,  setting  aside  the 
badness  of  the  other,  such  a  preface  is  necessary  to  the  subject. 
The  whole  thing  must,  I  think,  have  appeared  to  you,  who  are  a 
consecutive  man,  as  a  thing  almost  of  mere  words.  But  I  assure 
you  that,  when  I  wrote  it,  it  was  a  regular  stepping  of  the  imagi- 


80  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


nation  towards  a  truth.  My  having  written  that  argument  will 
perhaps  be  of  the  greatest  service  to  me  of  any  thing  I  ever  did. 
It  set  before  me  the  gradations  of  happiness,  even  like  a  kind  of 
pleasure-thermometer,  and  is  my  first  step  towards  the  chief  at- 
tempt in  the  drama  :  the  playing  of  different  natures  with  joy  and 
sorrow. 

Do  me  this  favor,  and  believe  me, 

Your  sincere  friend, 

J.  Keats. 

I  hope  your  next  work  will  be  of  a  more  general  interest.      I 
suppose  you  cogitate  a  little  about  it  now  and  then. 


Hampstead,  Feb.  27,  1818. 
My  Dear  Taylor, 

Your  alteration  strikes  me  as  being  a  great  im- 
provement. And  now  I  will  attend  to  the  punctuation  you  speak 
of.  The  comma  should  be  at  soberly,  and  in  the  other  passage 
the  comma  should  follow  quiet.  I  am  extremely  indebted  to  you 
for  this  alteration,  and  also  for  your  after  admonitions.  It  is  a 
sorry  thing  for  me  that  any  one  should  have  to  overcome  preju- 
dices in  reading  my  verses.  That  affects  me  more  than  any  hy- 
percriticism  on  any  particular  passage.  In  "  Endymion,"  I  have 
most  likely  but  moved  into  the  go-cart  from  the  leading  strings. 
In  poetry  I  have  a  few  axioms,  and  you  will  see  how  far  I  am 
from   their  centre. 

1st.  I  think  poetry  should  surprise  by  a  fine  excess,  and  not 
by  singularity  ;  it  should  strike  the  reader  as  a  wording  of  his 
own  highest  thoughts,  and  appear  almost  a  remembrance. 

2nd.  Its  touches  of  beauty  should  never  be  halfway,  thereby 
making  the  reader  breathless,  instead  of  content.  The  rise,  the 
progress,  the  setting  of  imagery,  should,  like  the  sun,  come  natu- 
ral to  him,  shine  over  him,  and  set  soberly,  although  in  magnifi- 
cence, leaving  him  in  the  luxury  of  twilight.  But  it  is  easier  to 
think  what  poetry  should  be,  than  to  write  it.  And  this  leads  me 
to 

Another  axiom — That  if  poetry  comes  not  as  naturally  as 
the  leaves  to  a  tree,  it  had   better   not  come  at   all.     However  it 


JOHN  KEATS.  81 


may  be  with  me,  I  cannot  help  looking  into  new  countries  with 
'•  Oh,  for  a  muse  of  fire  to  ascend  !"  If  "  Endymion"  serves  me 
as  a  pioneer,  perhaps  I  ought  to  be  content,  for,  thank  God,  I  can 
read,  and  perhaps  understand,  Sliakspeare  to  his  depths  ;  and  I 
have,  I  am  sure,  many  friends,  who,  if  I  fail,  will  attribute  any 
change  in  my  life  and  temper  to  humbleness  rather  than  pride — 
to  a  cowering  under  the  wings  of  great  poets,  rather  than  to  a 
bitterness  that  I  am  not  appreciated.  I  am  anxious  to  get  "  En- 
dymion" printed  that  I  may  forget  it,  and  proceed.  I  have  cop- 
ied the  Third  Book,  and  begun  the  Fourth.  1  will  take  care  the 
printer  shall  not  trip  up  my  heels. 
Remember  me  to  Percy  Street. 

Your  sincere  and  obliged  friend, 

John  Keats. 

P.  S. — You  shall  have  a  short  preface  in  good  time. 

Teignmouth,  14  March,  [1818.] 
Dear  Reynolds, 

I  escaped  being  blown  over,  and  blown  under,  and 
trees  and  house  being  toppled  on  me.  I  have,  since  hearing  of 
Brown's  accident,  had  an  aversion  to  a  dose  of  parapet,  and  being 
also  a  lover  of  antiquities,  I  would  sooner  have  a  harmless  piece  of 
Herculaneum  sent  me  quietly  as  a  present  than  ever  so  modern  a 
chimney-pot  tumbled  on  to  my  head.  Being  agog  to  see  some 
Devonshire,  I  would  have  taken  a  walk  the  first  day,  but  the  rain 
would  not  let  me  ;  and  the  second,  but  the  rain  would  not  let  me ; 
and  the  third,  but  the  rain  forbade  it.  Ditto  fourth,  ditto  fifth, 
ditto — so  I  made  up  my  mind  to  stop  in  doors,  and  catch  a  sight 
flying  between  the  showers :  and,  behold,  I  saw  a  pretty  valley, 
pretty  elites,  pretty  brooks,  pretty  meadows,  pretty  trees,  both 
standing  as  they  were  created,  and  blown  down  as  they  were  un- 
created. The  green  is  beautiful,  as  they  say,  and  pity  it  is  that 
it  is  amphibious — mais f  but,  alas!  the  flowers  here  wait  as  natu- 
rally for  the  rain  twice  a  day  as  the  muscles  do  for  the  tide ;  so 
we  look  upon  a  brook  in  these  parts  as  you  look  upon  a  splash  in 
your  country.     There  must  be  something  to  support  this — aye, 


82  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

fog,  hail,  snow,  rain,  mist,  blanketing  up  three  parts  of  the  year. 
This  Devonshire  is  like  Lydia  Languish,  very  entertaining  when 
it  smiles,  but  cursedly  subject  to  sympathetic  moisture.  You 
have  the  sensation  of  walking  under  one  great  Lamp-lighter  :  and 
you  can't  go  on  the  other  side  of  the  ladder  to  keep  your  frock 
clean.  Buy  a  girdle,  put  a  pebble  in  your  mouth,  loosen  your 
braces — for  I  am  going  among  scenery  whence  1  intend  to  tip  you 
the  Damosel  Radcliffe.  I'll  cavern  you,  and  grotto  you,  and 
water-fall  you,  and  wood  you,  and  water  you,  and  immense-rock 
you,  and  tremendous-sound  you,  and  solitude  you.  I'll  make  a 
lodgment  on  your  glacis  by  a  row  of  pines,  and  storm  your  covered 
way  with  bramble-bushes.  I'll  have  at  you  with  hip-and-haw 
small-shot,  and  cannonade  you  with  shingles.  I'll  be  witty  upon 
salt  fish,  and  impede  your  cavalry  with  clotted-cream.  But,  ah ! 
Coward  !  to  talk  at  this  rate  to  a  sick  man,  or,  I  hope,  to  one  that 
was  sick — for  I  hope  by  this  you  stand  on  your  right  foot.  If 
you  are  not — that's  all — I  intend  to  cut  all  sick  people  if  they  do 
not  make  up  their  minds  to  cut  Sickness — a  fellow  to  whom  I 
have  a  complete  aversion,  and  who,  strange  to  say,  is  harbored 
and  countenanced  in  several  houses  where  I  visit :  he  is  sitting 
now,  quite  impudent,  between  me  and  Tom  ;  he  insults  me  at 
poor  Jem  Rice's ;  and  you  have  seated  him  before  now,  between 
us  at  the  Theatre,  when  I  thought  he  looked  with  a  longing  eye  at 
poor  Kean.  I  shall  say,  once  for  all,  to  my  friends,  generally  and 
severally,  cut  that  fellow,  or  I  cut  you. 

I  went  to  the  Theatre  here  the  other  night,  which  I  forgot  to 
tell  George,  and  got  insulted,  which  I  ought  to  remember  to 
forget  to  tell  any  body  ;  for  I  did  not  fight,  and  as  yet  have  had 
no*  redress — "  Lie  thou  there,  sweetheart !"  I  wrote  to  Bailey 
yesterday,  obliged  to  speak  in  a  high  way,  and  a  damme,  who's 
afraid  1  for  I  had  owed  him  [a  letter]  so  long  :  however,  he  shall 
see  I  will  be  better  in  future.  Is  he  in  town  yet  ?  I  have  directed 
to  Oxford  as  the  better  chance. 

I  have  copied  my  fourth  Book,  and  shall  write  the  Preface 
soon.  I  wish  it  was  all  done ;  for  I  want  to  forget  it,  and  make 
my  mind  free  for  something  new.  Atkins,  the  coachman,  Bartlett, 
the  surgeon,  Simmons,  the  barber,  and  the  girls  over  at  the  bon- 
net shop,  say  we  shall  now  have  a  month  of  seasonable  weather 
— warm,  witty,  and  full  of  invention. 


JOHN  KEATS.  83 


Write  to  me,  and  tell  ine  that  you  are  well,  or  thereabouts; 
or,  by  the  holy  Bcaucoeur,  which  I  suppose  is  the  Virgin  Mary, 
or  the  repented  Magdalen,  (beautiful  name,  that  Magdalen,)  I'll 
take  to  my  wings  and  fly  away  to  any  where,  but  old  or  Nova  Scotia. 

I  wish  I  had  a  little  bit  of  innocent  metaphysic  in  my  head,  to 
criss-cross  the  letter  :  but  you  know  a  favorite  tune  is  hardest  to 
be  remembered  when  one  wants  it  most ;  and  you,  I  know,  have, 
long  ere  this,  taken  it  for  granted  that  I  never  have  any  specula- 
tions without  associating  you  in  them,  where  they  are  of  a  pleasant 
nature  :  and  you  know  enough  of  me  to  tell  the  places  where  I 
haunt  most,  so  that  if  you  think  for  five  minutes  after  having  read 
this,  you  will  find  it  a  long  letter,  and  see  written  in  the  air  be- 
fore you. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


Teignmouth,  25  March,  1818. 
My  Dear  Reynolds, 

In  hopes  of  cheering  you  through  a  minute  or  two,  I 
was  determined,  will  he  nill  he,  to  send  you  some  lines,  so  you 
will  excuse  the  unconnected  subjects  and  careless  verse.  You 
know,  I  am  sure,  Leland's  "  Enchanted  Castle,"  and  I  wish  you 
may  be  pleased  with  my  remembrance  of  it.  The  rain  is  come 
on  again.  I  think  with  me  Devonshire  stands  a  very  poor  chance. 
I  shall  damn  it  up  hill  and  down  dale,  if  it  keep  up  to  the  average 
of  six  fine  days  in  three  weeks.     Let  me  hear  better  news  of  you. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Dear  Reynolds  !  as  last  night  I  lay  in  bed. 
There  came  before  my  eyes  that  wonted  thread 
Of  shapes,  and  shadows,  and  remembrances, 
That  every  other  minute  vex  and  please  : 
Thmgs  all  disjointed  come  from  north  and  south, — 
Two  Witch's  eyes  above  a  Cherub's  inoulh, 
Voltaire  with  casque  and  shield  and  habergeon, 
And  Alexander  with  his  night-cap  on  ; 
Old  Socrates  a  tying  his  cravat, 
And  Hazlitt  playing  with  Miss  Edgeworth's  Cat ; 


84  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

And  Junius  Brutus,  pretty  well,  so  so, 
Making  the  best  of 's  way  towards  Soho. 

Few  are  there  who  escape  these  visitings — 
Perhaps  one  or  two  whose  lives  have  patent  wings. 
And  thro'  whose  curtains  peeps  no  hellish  nose, 
No  wild-boar  tushes,  and  no  Mermaid's  toes  ; 
But  flowers  bursting  out  with  lusty  pride, 
And  young  ^olian  hearts  personified  ; 
Some  Titian  colors  touch'd  into  real  life — 
The  sacrifice  goes  on  ;  the  pontiff  knife 
Gleams  in  the  Sun,  the  milk-white  heifer  lows. 
The  pipes  go  shrilly,  the  libation  flows  : 
A  white  sail  shows  above  the  green-head  cliff". 
Moves  round  the  point,  and  throws  her  anchor  stiflf; 
The  mariners  join  hymn  with  those  on  land. 

You  know  the  enchanted  Castle, — it  doth  stand 
Upon  a  rock,  on  the  border  of  a  Lake, 
Nested  in  trees,  which  all  do  seem  to  shake 
From  some  old  magic-like  Urganda's  Sword. 
0  Phoebus  !   that  I  had  thy  sacred  word 
To  show  this  Castle,  in  fair  dreaming  wise, 
Unto  my  friend,  while  sick  and  ill  he  lies ! 

You  know  it  well  enough,  where  it  doth  seem 
A  mossy  place,  a  Merlin's  Hall,  a  dream  ; 
You  know  the  clear  Lake,  and  the  little  Isles, 
The  mountains  blue,  and  cold  near  neighbor  rills. 
All  which  elsewhere  are  but  half  animate  ; 
There  do  they  look  alive  to  love  and  hate. 
To  smiles  and  frowns  ;  they  seem  a  lifted  mound 
Above  some  giant,  pulsing  underground. 

Part  of  the  Building  was  a  chosen  See, 
Built  by  a  banished  Santon  of  Chaldee  ; 
The  other  part,  two  thousand  years  from  him, 
Was  built  by  Cuthbert  de  Saint  Aldebrim  ; 
Then  there's  a  little  wing,  far  from  the  Sun, 
Built  by  a  Lapland  Witch  turn'd  maudlin  Nun  ; 
And  many  other  juts  of  aged  stone 
Founded  with  many  a  mason-devil's  grocin. 

The  doors  all  look  as  if  they  oped  themselves, 
The  windows  as  if  latched  by  Fays  and  Elves, 


JOHN  KEATS.  85 


And  from  them  comes  a  silver  flash  of  light, 
As  f'om  the  westward  of  a  Summer's  night ; 
Or  like  a  beauteous  woman's  large  blue  eyes 
Gone  mad  thro'  olden  songs  and  poesies. 

See  !  what  is  coming  from  the  distance  dim  ! 
A  golden  Galley  all  in  silken  trim! 
Three  rows  of  oars  are  lightening,  moment  whiles. 
Into  the  verd'rous  bosoms  of  those  isles ; 
Towards  the  shade,  under  the  Castle  wall. 
It  comes  in  silence, — now  'tis  hidden  all. 
The  Clarion  sounds,  and  from  a  Postern-gate 
An  echo  of  sweet  music  doth  create 
A  fear  in  the  poor  Herdsman,  who  doth  bring 
His  beasts  to  trouble  the  enchanted  spring, — 
He  tells  of  the  sweet  music,  and  the  spot. 
To  all  his  friends,  and  they  believe  him  not. 

O,  that  our  dreamings  all,  of  sleep  or  wake, 
Would  all  their  colors  from  the  sunset  take 
From  something  of  material  sublime, 
Rather  than  shadow  our  own  soul's  day-time 
In  the  dark  void  of  night.     For  in  the  world 
We  jostle, — but  my  flag  is  not  unfurl'd 
On  the  Admiral-staff, — and  so  philosophize 
I  dare  not  yet !     Oh,  never  will  the  prize. 
High  reason,  and  the  love  of  good  and  ill. 
Be  my  award  !     Things  cannot  to  the  will 
Be  settled,  but  they  tease  us  out  of  thought ; 
Or  is  it  that  imagination  brought 
Beyond  its  proper  buund,  yet  still  confin'd. 
Lost  in  a  sort  of  Purgatory  blind. 
Cannot  refer  to  any  standard  law 
Of  either  earth  or  heaven  ?     It  is  a  flaw 
In  happiness,  to  see  beyond  our  bourn, — 
It  forces  us  in  summer  skies  to  mourn. 
It  spoils  the  singing  of  the  Nightingale. 

Dear  Reynolds  I   I  have  a  mysterious  tale. 
And  cannot  speak  it :   the  first  page  I  read 
Upon  a  Lampit  rock  of  green  sea-weed 
Among  the  breakers  ;  'twas  a  quiet  eve. 
The  rocks  were  silent,  the  wide  sea  did  wave 
An  untumuliuous  fringe  of  silver  foam 
Along  the  flat  brown  sand  ;  I  was  at  boDXc 

6 


8G  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

And  should  have  been  most  happy, — but  I  saw 

Too  far  into  the  sea,  where  every  man 

The  greater  on  the  less  feeds  evermore, — 

But  I  saw  too  distinct  into  the  core 

Of  an  eternal  fierce  destruction, 

And  so  from  happiness  I  far  was  gone. 

Still  am  I  sick  of  it,  and  tho',  to-day, 

I've  gathered  young  spring-leaves,  and  flowers  gay 

Of  periwinkle  and  wild  strawberry, 

Still  do  I  that  most  fierce  destruction  see, — 

The  Shark  at  savage  prey, — the  Hawk  at  pounce, — 

The  gentle  Robin,  like  a  Pard  or  Ounce, 

Ravening  a  Worm, — Away,  ye  horrid  moods ! 

Moods  of  one's  mind  !     You  know  I  hate  them  well, 

You  know  I'd  sooner  be  a  clapping  Bell 

To  some  Kamtchatcan  Missionary  Church, 

Than  with  these  horrid  moods  be  left  i'  the  lurch. 


Teignmouth,  25  March,  1818. 
My  Dear  Rice, 

Being  in  the  midst  of  your  favorite  Devon,  I  should 
not,  by  right,  pen  one  word  but  it  should  contain  a  vast  portion  of 
wit,  wisdom,  and  learning ;  for  I  have  heard  that  Milton,  ere  he 
wrote  his  answer  to  Salmasius,  came  into  these  parts,  and  for  one 
whole  month,  rolled  himself,  for  three  whole  hours  a  day,  in  a 
certain  meadow  hard  by  us,  where  the  mark  of  his  nose  at  equi- 
distances is  still  shown.  The  exhibitor  of  the  said  meadow  fur- 
ther saith,  that,  after  these  rollings,  not  a  nettle  sprang  up  in  all 
the  seven  acres,  for  seven  years,  and  that  from  the  said  time  a 
new  sort  of  plant  was  made  from  the  whitethorn,  of  a  thornless 
nature,  very  much  used  by  the  bucks  of  the  present  day  to  rap 
their  boots  withal.  This  account  made  me  very  naturally  sup- 
pose that  the  nettles  and  thorns  ethcrealized  by  the  scholar's  rotato- 
ry motion,  and  garnered  in  his  head,  thence  flew,  after  a  process  of 
fermentation,  against  the  luckless  Salmasius,  and  occasioned  his 
well-known  and  unhappy  end.  What  a  happy  thing  it  would  be 
if  we  could  settle  our  thoughts  and  make  our  minds  up  on  any 
matter  in  five  minutes,  and  remain  content,  that  is,  build  a  sort  of 
mental  cottage  of  feelings,  quiet  and  pleasant — to  have  a  sort  of 


JOHN  KEATS.  87 


philosophical  back-garden,  and  cheerful  holiday-keeping  front  one. 
But,  alas  !  this  never  can  be  ;  for  as  the  material  cottager  knows 
there  are  such  places  as  France  and  Italy,  and  the  Andes,  and 
burning  mountains,  so  the  spiritual  cottager  has  knowledge  of  the 
terra  semi-incognita  of  things  unearthly,  and  cannot,  for  his  life, 
keep  in  the  check-rein — or  I  should  stop  here,  quiet  and  comforta- 
ble in  my  theory  of — nettles.  You  will  see,  however,  I  am 
obliged  to  run  wild,  being  attracted  by  the  lode-stone  concatenation. 
No  sooner  had  I  settled  the  knotty  point  of  Salmasius,  than  the 
devil  put  this  whim  into  my  head  in  the  likeness  of  one  of  Pythago- 
ras's  questionings — Did  Milton  do  more  good  or  harm  in  the  world  ? 
He  wrote,  let  me  inform  you,  (for  I  have  it  from  a  friend  who  had 

it  of ,)  he   wrote  "  Lycidas,"  "Comus,"  "Paradise  Lost," 

and  other  Poems,  with  much  delectable  prose ;  he  was  moreover 
an  active  friend  to  man  all  his  life,  and  has  been  since  his  death. 
Very  good.  But,  my  dear  fellow,  I  must  let  you  know  that,  as 
there  is  ever  the  same  quantity  of  matter  constituting  this  habita- 
ble globe,  as  the  ocean,  notwithstanding  the  enormous  changes  and 
revolutions  taking  place  in  some  or  other  of  its  demesnes,  not- 
withstanding waterspouts,  whirlpools,  and  mighty  rivers  emptying 
themselves  into  it,  it  still  is  made  up  of  the  same  bulk,  nor  ever 
varies  the  number  of  its  atoms  ;  and,  as  a  certain  bulk  of  water 
was  instituted  at  the  creation,  so,  very  likely,  a  certain  portion  of 
intellect  was  spun  forth  into  the  thin  air,  for  tiie  brains  of  man  to 
prey  upon  it.  You  will  see  my  drift,  without  any  unnecessary 
parenthesis.  That  which  is  contained  in  the  Pacific  could  not  be 
in  the  hollow  of  the  Caspian  ;  that  which  was  in  Milton's  head 
could  not  find  room  in  Charles  the  Second's.  He,  like  a  moon, 
attracted  intellect  to  its  flow — it  has  not  ebbed  yet,  but  has  left  the 
shore-pebbles  all  bare — I  mean  all  bucks,  authors  of  Hengist,  and 
Castlereaghs  of  the  present  day,  who,  without  Milton's  gormand- 
izing, might  have  been  all  wise  men.  Now  for  as  much  as  I  was 
very  predisposed  to  a  country  I  had  heard  you  speak  so  highly 
of,  I  took  particular  notice  of  every  thing  during  my  journey,  and 
have  bought  some  nice  folio  asses'  skins  for  memorandums.  I 
have  seen  every  thing  but  the  wind — and  that,  they  say,  becomes 
visible  by  taking  a  dose  of  acorns,  or  sleeping  one  night  in  a  hog- 
trough,  with  your  tail  to  the  sow-sow-west. 


88  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

I  went  yesterday  to  Dawlisli  fair. 

"  Over  the  Hill  and  over  the  Dale, 
And  over  the  Bourne  to  Dawlish, 
Where  ginger-bread  wives  have  a  scanty  sale, 
And  ginger-bread  nuts  are  smallish,"  &c.  &c. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Mr.  Reynolds  seems  to  have  objected  to  a  Preface  written  for 
"  Endymion,"  and  Keats  thus  manfully  and  eloquently  remon- 
strates : — 

Teignmouth,  April  9th,  1818. 

My  Dear  Reynolds, 

Since  you  all  agree  that  the  thing  is  bad,  it  must 
be  so — though  I  am  not  aware  that  there  is  any  thing  like  Hunt 
in  it,  (and  if  there  is,  it  is  my  natural  vvay,  and  I  have  something 
in  common  with  Hunt.)  Look  over  it  again,  and  examine  into 
the  motives,  the  seeds,  from  which  every  one  sentence  sprang. 

I  have  not  the  slightest  feeling  of  humility  towards  the  public, 
or  to  any  thing  in  existence  but  the  Eternal  Being,  the  Principle 
of  Beauty,  and  the  Memory  of  Great  Men.  When  I  am  writing 
for  myself,  for  the  mere  sake  of  the  moment's  enjoyment,  perhaps 
nature  has  its  course  with  me ;  but  a  Preface  i4S  written  to  the 
public — a  thing  I  cannot  help  looking  upon  as  an  enemy,  and 
which  I  cannot  address  without  feelings  of  hostility.  If  I  write  a 
Preface  in  a  supple  or  subdued  style,  it  will  not  be  in  character 
with  me  as  a  public  speaker. 

I  would  be  subdued  before  my  friends,  and  thank  them  for  sub- 
duing me  ;  but  among  multitudes  of  men  I  have  no  feel  of  stoop- 
ing ;   I  hate  the  idea  of  humility  to  them. 

I  never  wrote  one  single  line  of  poetry  with  the  least  shadow 
of  public  thought. 

Forgive  me  for  vexing  you,  and  making  a  Trojan  horse  of 
such  a  trifle,  both  with  respect  to  the  matter  in  question,  and  my- 
self; but  it  eases  me  to  tell  you  :  I  could  not  live  without  the  love 
of  my  friends  ;  I  would  jump  down  ^Etna  for  any  great  public 
good — but  I  hate  a  mawkish  popularity.     I  cannot  be  subdued 


JOHN  KEATS.  89 


before  them.  My  glory  would  be  to  daunt  and  dazzle  the  thou- 
sand jabberers  about  pictures  and  books.  I  see  swarms  of  porcu- 
pines with  their  quills  erect  "  like  lime-twigs  set  to  catch  my 
winged  book,"  and  I  would  fright  them  away  with  a  touch.  You 
will  saj'  my  Preface  is  not  much  of  a  touch.  It  would  have  been 
too  insulting  "  to  begin  from  Jove,"  and  I  could  not  [set]  a  golden 
head  upon  a  thing  of  clay.  If  there  is  any  fault  in  the  Preface  it 
is  not  atfectation,  but  an  undersong  of  disrespect  to  the  public.  If 
I  write  another  Preface  it  must  be  done  without  a  thought  of  those 
people.  I  will  think  about  it.  If  it  should  not  reach  you  in  four 
or  five  days,  tell  Taylor  to  publish  it  without  a  Preface,  and 
let  the  Dedication  simply  stand — "  Inscribed  to  the  Memory  of 
Thomas  Chatterton." 

I  had  resolved  last  night  to  write  to  you  this  morning — I  wish 
it  had  been  about  something  else — something  to  greet  you  towards 
the  close  of  your  long  illness.  I  have  had  one  or  two  intimations 
of  your  going  to  Hampstead  for  a  space  ;  and  I  regret  to  see  your 
confounded  rheumatism  keeps  you  in  Little  Britain,  where  I  am 
sure  the  air  is  too  confined. 

Devonshire  continues  rainy.  As  the  drops  beat  against  my 
window,  they  give  me  the  same  sensation  as  a  quart  of  cold  water 
offered  to  revive  a  half  drowned  devil — no  feel  of  the  clouds  drop- 
ping fatness;  but  as  if  the  roots  of  the  earth  were  rotten,  cold,  and 
drenched.  I  have  not  been  able  to  go  to  Kent's  ca[ve  ?]  at  Bab- 
bicomb  ;  however,  on  one  very  beautiful  day  I  had  a  fine  clamber 
over  the  rocks  all  along  as  far  as  that  place. 

I  shall  be  in  town  in  about  ten  days.  We  go  by  way  of  Bath 
on  purpose  to  call  on  Bailey.  I  hope  soon  to  be  writing  to  you 
about  the  things  of  the  north,  purposing  to  way  fare  all  over  those 
parts.  I  have  settled  my  accoutrements  in  my  own  mind,  and  will 
go  to  gorge  wonders.  However,  we'll  have  some  days  together 
before  I  set  out. 

I  have  many  reasons  for  going  wonder-ways  ;  to  make  my 
winter  chair  free  from  spleen ;  to  enlarge  my  vision ;  to  escape 
disquisitions  on  poetry,  and  Kingston-criticism  ;  to  promote  diges- 
tion and  economize  shoe-leather.  I'll  have  leather  buttons  and 
belt;  and,  if  Brown  holds  his  mind,  "over  the  hills  we  go."  If 
my  books  will  keep  me  to  it,  then  will  I  take  all  Europe  in  turn, 


90  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

and  see  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  and  the  glory  of  them.  Tom 
is  getting  better  :  he  hopes  you  may  meet  him  at  the  top  of  the 
hill.     My  love  to  your  nurse. 

I  am  ever  your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Teignmouth,  April  10,  1818. 

My  Dear  Reynolds, 

I  am  anxious  you  should  find  this  Preface  tolerable. 
If  there  is  an  affectation  in  it  'tis  natural  to  me.  Do  let  the  plant- 
er's devil  cook  it,  and  let  me  be  as  "  the  casing  air." 

You  are  too  good  in  this  matter ;  were  I  in  your  state,  I  am 
certain  I  should  have  no  thought  but  of  discontent  and  illness.  I 
might,  though,  be  taught  patience.  I  had  an  idea  of  giving  no 
Preface  :  however,  don't  you  think  this  had  better  go  ?  O  !  let 
it — one  should  not  be  too  timid  of  committing  faults. 

The  climate  here  weighs  us  [down]  completely  ;  Tom  is  quite 
low-spirited.  It  is  impossible  to  live  in  a  country  which  is  con- 
tinually under  hatches.  Who  would  live  in  a  region  of  mists, 
game  laws,  indemnity  bills,  &c.,  when  there  is  such  a  place  as 
Italy  ?  It  is  said  this  England  from  it  clime  produces  a  spleen, 
able  to  engender  the  finest  sentiments,  and  covers  the  whole  face 
of  the  isle  with  green.     So  it  ought,  I'm  sure. 

I  should  still  like  the  Dedication  simply,  as  I  said  in  my  last. 

I  wanted  to  send  you  a  few  songs,  written  in  your  favorite 
Devon.  It  cannot  be !  Rain,  rain,  rain  !  I  am  going  this  morn- 
ing to  take  a  facsimile  of  a  letter  of  Nelson's,  very  much  to  his 
honor ;  you  will  be  greatly  pleased  when  you  see  it,  in  about  a 
week. 

What  a  spite  it  is  one  cannot  get  out !  The  little  way  1  went 
yesterday,  I  found  a  lane  banked  on  each  side  with  a  store  of  prim- 
roses, while  the  earlier  bushes  are  beginning  to  leaf. 

I  shall  hear  a  good  account  of  you  soon. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

I  cannot  lay  hands  on  the  first  Preface,  but  here  is  the  second, 
which  no  one  will   regret  to  read   again,  both   from  its  intrinsic 


JOHN  KEATS.  91 


truth  and  its  representation,  in  tlie  aptest  terms,  of  the  state  of 
Keats's  mind  at  this  time,  and  of  his  honest  judjrment  of  himself. 

"  Knowinji^  within  myself  the  manner  in  which  this  Poem  has 
been  produced,  it  is  not  without  a  feeling  of  regret  that  I  make  it 
public. 

"  What  manner  I  mean,  will  he  quite  clear  to  the  reader,  who 
must  soon  perceive  great  inexperience,  immaturity,  and  every  er- 
ror denoting  a  feverish  attempt,  rather  than  a  deed  accomplished. 
The  two  first  books,  and  indeed  the  two  last,  I  feel  sensible  are 
not  of  such  completion  as  to  warrant  their  passing  the  press;  nor 
should  they  if  I  thought  a  year's  castigation  would  do  them  any 
good;  it  will  not;  the  foundations  are  too  sandy.  It  is  just  that 
this  youngster  should  die  away :  a  sad  thought  for  me,  if  I  had 
not  some  hope  that  while  it  is  dwindling  I  may  be  plotting  and 
fitting  myself  for  verses  fit  to  live. 

"  This  may  be  speaking  too  presumptuously  and  may  deserve 
a  punishment ;  but  no  feeling  man  will  be  forward  to  inflict  it ;  he 
will  leave  me  alone,  with  the  conviction  that  there  is  not  a  fiercer 
hell  than  the  failure  in  a  great  object.  This  is  not  written  with 
the  least  atom  of  purpose  to  forestall  criticisms,  of  course,  but 
from  the  desire  I  have  to  conciliate  men  who  are  competent  to 
look,  and  who  do  look  with  a  zealous  eye  to  the  honor  of  English 
literature.  The  imagination  of  a  boy  is  healthy,  and  the  mature 
imagination  of  a  man  is  healthy  ;  but  there  is  a  space  of  life  be- 
tween, in  which  the  soul  is  in  a  ferment,  the  character  undecided, 
the  way  of  life  uncertain,  the  ambition  thick-sighted ;  thence  pro- 
ceeds mawkishness,  and  all  the  thousand  bitters  which  those  men 
I  speak  of  must  necessarily  taste  in  going  over  the  following  pages. 
I  hope  I  have  not  in  too  late  a  day  touched  the  beautiful  mytholo- 
gy of  Greece  and  dulled  its  brightness ;  for  I  wish  to  try  once 
more,  before  I  bid  it  farewell." 


Teignmoutii,  27  April,  1818. 
My  Dear  Revnolds, 

It  is  an  awful  while  since  you  have  lit'ard  from 
me.  I  hope  I  may  not  be  punished,  when  I  see  you  well,  and  so 
anxious  as  you  always  are  for  me,  with  the  remembrance  of  my 


92  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

so  seldom  writing  when  you  were  so  horribly  confined.  The 
most  unhappy  hours  in  our  lives  are  those  in  which  we  recollect 
times  past  to  our  own  blushing.  If  we  are  immortal,  that  must 
be  the  Hell.  If  I  must  be  immortal,  I  hope  it  will  be  after  having 
taken  a  little  of  "that  watery  labyrinth,"  in  order  to  forget  some 
of  my  school-boy  days,  and  others  since  those. 

I  have  heard  from  George,  at  dillerent  limes,  how  slowly  you 
were  recovering.  It  is  a  tedious  thing  ;  but  all  nT^dical  men  will 
tell  you  how  far  a  very  gradual  amendment  is  preferable.  You 
will  be  strong  after  this,  never  fear. 

We  are  here  still  enveloped  in  clouds.  I  lay  awake  last  night 
listening  to  the  rain,  with  the  sense  of  being  drowned  and  rotted 
like  a  grain  of  wheat.  There  is  a  continual  courtesy  between  the 
heavens  and  the  earth.  ,  The  heavens  rain  down  their  unwel- 
comeness,  and  the  earth  sends  it  up  again,  to  be  returned  to- 
morrow. 

Tom  has  taken  a  fancy  to  a  physician  here.  Dr.  Turton,  and, 
I  think,  is  getting  better;  therefore  I  shall,  perhaps,  remain  here 
some  months.  I  have  written  to  George  for  some  books — shall 
learn  Greek,  and  very  likely  Italian  ;  and,  in  other  ways,  prepare 
myself  to  ask  Hazlitt,  in  about  a  year's  time,  the  best  metaphysi- 
cal road  I  can  take.  For,  although  I  take  Poetry  to  be  chief,  yet 
there  is  something  else  wanting  to  one  who  passes  his  life  among 
books  and  thoughts  on  books.  I  long  to  feast  upon  old  Homer  as 
we  have  upon  Shakspeare,  and  as  I  have  lately  upon  Milton.  If 
you  understand  Greek,  and  would  read  me  passages  now  and 
then,  explaining  their  meaning,  'twould  be,  from  its  mi.stiness,  per- 
haps, a  greater  lu.xury  than  reading  the  thing  one's  self.  1  shall 
be  happy  when  I  can  do  the  same  for  you. 

I  have  written  for  my  folio  Siiakspeare,  in  which  there  are  the 
first  few  stanzas  of  my  "Pot  of  Basil."  I  have  the  rest  here, 
finished,  and  will  copy  the  whole  out  fair  shortly,  and  George  will 
bring  it  you.  The  compliment  is  paid  by  us  to  Boccace,  whether 
we  publish  or  no  :  so  there  is  content  in  this  world.  Mind  [my 
Poem]  is  short;  you  must  be  deliberate  about  yours:  you  must 
not  thhik  of  it  till  many  montlis  after  you  are  quite  well: — then 
put  your  passion  to  it,  and  I  shall  be  bound  up  with  you  in  the 
sliadows  of  mind,  as  we  are  in  our  matters  of  human  life.  Per- 
haps a  stanza  or  two  will  not  be  too  foreign  to  your  sickness. 


JOHN  KEATS.  93 


"  Were  they  unhappy  then  ?     It  cannot  be : 
Too  many  tears,"  &c.  &c. 

"  But  for  the  general  award  of  love,"  &.c. 

"  She  wept  alone  for  pleasures,"  &c. 

The  fifth  line  ran  thus  : — 

"  What  might  have  been,  too  plainly  did  she  see." 

Give  my  love  to  your  mother  and  sisters.     Remember  me  to 
the  Butlers — not  forgetting  Sarah. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


This  adaptation  of  Boccaccio  was  intended  to  form  part  of  a 
collection  of  Tales  from  the  great  Italian  novelist,  versified  by 
Mr.  Reynolds  and  himself.  Two  by  Mr.  Reynolds  appeared  in 
the  "  Garden  of  Florence  ;"  "  Isabella  "  was  the  only  other  one 
Keats  completed. 

Teignmouth,  April  27,  1818. 

My  Dear  Taylok, 

I  think  1  did  wrong  to  leave  to  you  all  the  trouble  of 
"Endymion."  But  I  could  not  help  it  then — another  time  I  shall 
be  more  bent  to  all  sorts  of  troubles  and  disagreeables.  Young 
men,  for  some  time,  have  an  idea  that  such  a  thing  as  happiness 
is  to  be  had,  and  therefore  are  extremely  impatient  under  any 
unpleasant  restraining.  In  time,  however, — of  such  stuff  is  the 
world  about  them, — thoy  know  better,  and  instead  of  striving 
from  uneasiness,  greet  it  as  an  habitual  sensation,  a  panier  which 
is  to  weigh  upon  them  through  life.  And  in  proportion  to  my 
disgust  at  the  task  is  my  sense  of  your  kindness  and  anxiety. 
The  book  pleased  me  much.  It  is  very  free  from  faults;  and, 
although  there  are  one  or  two  words  I  should  wish  replaced,  I  see 
in  many  places  an  improvement  greatly  to  the  purpose. 

I  was  proposing  to  travel  over  the  North  this  summer.     There 

5* 


94  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

is  but  one  thing  to  prevent  me.  I  know  nothing — I  have  read 
nothing — and  I  mean  to  follow  Solomon's  directions,  "  Get  learn- 
ing— get  understanding."  I  find  earlier  days  are  gone  by — I 
find  that  I  can  have  no  enjoyment  in  the  world  but  continual 
drinking  of  knowledge.  I  find  there  is  no  worthy  pursuit  but  the 
idea  of  doing  some  good  to  the  world.  Some  do  it  with  their  so- 
ciety ;  some  with  their  wit ;  some  with  their  benevolence ;  some 
with  a  sort  of  power  of  conferring  pleasure  and  good  humor  on 
all  they  meet — and  in  a  thousand  ways,  all  dutilul  to  tlie  com- 
mand of  great  Nature.  There  is  but  one  way  for  me.  The 
road  lies  through  application,  study,  and  thought.  1  will  pursue 
it ;  and,  for  that  end,  purpose  retiring  for  some  years.  1  have 
been  hovering  lor  some  time  between  an  exquisite  sense  of  the 
luxurious,  and  a  love  for  philosophy  :  were  I  calculated  for  the 
former  I  should  be  glad.  But  as  I  am  not,  I  shall  turn  all  my 
soul  to  the  latter. 

My  brother  Tom  is  getting  better,  and  I  hope  I  shall  see  both 
him  and  Reynolds  better  before  1  retire  from  the  world.  I  shall 
see  you  soon,  and  have  some  talk  about  what  books  I  shall  take 
with  me. 

Your  very  sincere  friend. 

John  Keats. 


It  is  difficult  to  add  any  thing  to  the  passages  in  these  letters, 
which  show  the  spirit  in  which  "  Endymion  "  was  written  and 
published.  This  first  sustained  work  of  a  man  whose  undoubted 
genius  was  idolized  by  a  circle  of  aifectionate  friends,  whose 
weaknesses  were  rather  encouraged  than  repressed  by  the  intel- 
lectual atmosphere  in  which  he  lived,  who  had  rarely  been  ena- 
bled to  measure  his  spiritual  stature  with  that  of  persons  of  other 
scliools  of  thought  and  habits  of  niind,  appears  to  have  been  pro- 
duced with  a  humility  that  the  severest  criticism  might  not  have 
engendered.  Keats,  it  is  clear,  did  not  require  to  be  told  how  far 
he  was  from  the  perfect  Poet.  The  very  consciousness  of  his 
capability  to  do  something  higher  and  better,  which  accompanies 
the  lowly  estimate  of  his  work,  kept  the  ideal  ever  before  him, 
and  urged  him  to  complete  it  rather  as  a   process  of  poetical  edu— 


JOHN  KEATS.  95 


cation  than  as  a  triumph  of  contented  power.  Never  was  less 
presumption  exhibited — never  the  sharp  strolve  of  contemptuous 
censure  less  required.  His  own  Preface  was  the  more  depreca- 
tory, in  that  it  did  not  deny  that  he  was  himself  disappointed,  and 
that  he  looked  to  future  efforts  to  justify  his  claims  to  others,  and 
himself  to  himself.  This  dissatisfaction  with  his  book,  and  his 
brother's  ill-health,  cast  over  his  mind  the  gloom  which  he  hardly 
conceals  in  the  letters  of  this  period,  though  it  is  remarkable  how 
free  they  are,  at  all  times,  from  any  merely  querulous  expres- 
sions, and  from  the  vague  sentimentality  attributed  to  some  of  his 
literary  associates. 

Teignmouth,  May  3,  [1818.] 
My  Dear  Reynolds, 

What  I  complain  of  is,  that  I  have  been  in  so  uneasy  a 
state  of  mind  as  not  to  be  fit  to  write  to  an  invalid.  I  cannot 
write  to  any  length  under  a  disguised  feeling.  I  should  have 
loaded  you  with  an  addition  of  gloom,  which  I  am  sure  you  do 
not  want.  I  am  now,  thank  God,  in  a  humor  to  give  you  a  good 
groat's  worth  ;  for  Tom,  after  a  night  without  a  wink  of  sleep, 
and  over-burthened  with  fever,  has  got  up,  after  a  refreshing  day- 
sleep,  and  is  better  than  he  has  been  for  a  long  time.  And  you, 
I  trust,  have  been  again  round  the  Common  without  any  effect  but 
refreshment.  As  to  the  matter,  I  hope  I  can  say,  with  Sir  An- 
drew, "  I  have  matter  enough  in  my  head,"  in  your  favor.  And 
now,  in  the  second  place,  for  I  reckon  that  I  have  finished  my 
Imprimis,  I  am  glad  you  blow  up  the  weather.  All  tlirough  your 
letter  there  is  a  leaning  towards  a  climate-curse ;  and  you  know 
what  a  delicate  satisfaction  there  is  in  having  a  vexation  anathe- 
matized. One  would  think  that  there  has  been  growing  up,  for 
these  last  four  thousand  years,  a  grand-child  scion  of  the  old  for- 
bidden tree,  and  that  some  modern  Eve  had  just  violated  it  j  and 
that  there  was  come,  with  double  charge,  "  Notus  and  Afer 
black  with  thunderous  clouds  from  Serraliona."  Tom  wants  to 
be  in  town  :  we  will  have  some  such  days  upon  the  heath  like 
tliat  of  last  summer — and  why  not  with  the  same  book  ?  or  what 
do  you  say  to  a  black-letter  Chaucer,  printed  in  1596  ?  Aye,  I 
have  got  one,  huzza  !  1  .shall  have  it  bound  in  Gothique — a  nice 


96  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

sombre  binding  ;  it  will  go  a  little  way  to  unmodernize.  And, 
also,  I  see  no  reason,  because  1  have  been  away  this  last  month, 
why  I  should  not  have  a  peep  at  your  Spenserian — notwithstand- 
ing you  speak  of  your  office,  in  my  thought,  a  little  too  early  ; 
for  I  do  not  see  why  a  mind  like  yours  is  not  capable  of  harbor- 
ing and  digesting  the  whole  mystery  of  Law  as  easily  as  Parson 
Hugh  does  pippins,  which  did  not  hinder  him  from  his  poetic 
canary.  Were  I  to  study  Physic,  or  rather  Medicine  again,  I 
feel  it  would  not  make  the  least  difference  in  my  poetry  ;  when 
the  mind  is  in  its  infancy  a  bias  is  in  reality  a  bias,  but  when  we 
have  acquired  more  strength,  a  bias  becomes  no  bias.  Every 
department  of  knowledge  we  see  excellent  and  calculated  towards 
a  great  whole.  I  am  so  convinced  of  this  that  I  am  glad  at  not 
having  given  away  my  medical  books,  which  I  shall  again  look 
over,  to  keep  alive  the  little  I  know  thitherwards  ;  and  moreover 
intend,  through  you  and  Rice,  to  become  a  sort  of  pip-civilian. 
An  extensive  knowledge  is  needful  to  thinking  people ;  it  takes 
away  the  heat  and  fever,  and  helps,  by  widening  speculation,  to 
ease  the  burden  of  the  Mystery,  a  thing  which  1  begin  to  under- 
stand a  little,  and  which  weighed  upon  you  in  the  most  gloomy 
and  true  sentence  in  your  letters.  The  difference  of  high  sensa- 
tions, with  and  without  knowledge,  appears  to  me  this :  in  the  lat- 
ter case  we  are  continually  falling  ten  thousand  fathoms  deep, 
and  being  blown  up  again,  without  wings,  and  with  all  [the]  hor- 
ror of  a  bare-shouldered  creature ;  in  the  former  case,  our 
shoulders  are  fledged,  and  we  go  through  the  same  air  and  space 
without  fear.  This  is  running  one's  rigs  on  the  score  of  abstracted 
benefit;  when  we  come  to  human  life  and  the  affections,  it  is  im- 
possible to  know  how  a  parallel  of  breast  and  head  can  be  drawn  ; 
(you  will  forgive  me  for  thus  privately  treading  out  [of]  my  depth, 
and  take  it  for  treading  as  school-boys  tread  the  water  ;)  it  is  im- 
possible to  know  how  far  knowledge  will  console  us  for  the  death 
of  a  friend,  and  the  "  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to."  With  respect  to 
the  affections  and  poetry,  you  must  know  by  sympathy  my  thoughts 
that  way,  and  I  dare  say  these  few  lines  will  be  but  a  ratification. 
I  wrote  them  on  May-day,  and  intend  to  finish  the  ode  all  in 
good  time. 


JOHN  KEATS.  97 


Mother  of  Hermes  !  and  still  youihful  Maia  ! 

May  I  sing  to  thee 
As  thou  wast  hymned  on  the  shores  of  Baitel 

Or  inay  I  woo  thee 
In  earlier  Sicilian  ?  or  thy  smiles 
Seek  as  they  once  were  sonuht,  in  Grecian  isles. 
By  bards  who  died  content  on  pleasant  sward, 
Leaving  great  verse  unto  a  Utile  clan  ? 
O,  give  me  their  old  vigor,  and  unheard 
Save  of  the  quiet  Primrose,  and  the  span 

Of  heaven  and  few  ears. 
Rounded  by  thee,  my  song  should  die  away 

Content  as  theirs, 
Rich  in  the  simple  worship  of  a  day. 

You  may  perhaps  be  anxious  to  know  for  fact  to  what  sen- 
tence in  your  letter  I  allude.  You  say,  "  I  fear  there  is  little 
chance  of  any  thing  else  in  this  life."  You  seem  by  that  to  have 
been  goini,'  through,  with  a  more  painful  and  acute  zest,  the  same 
labyrinth  that  I  have — I  have  come  to  the  same  conclusion  thus 
far.  My  branchings-out  therefrom  have  been  nunnerous :  one  of 
them  is  the  consideration  of  Wordsworth's  genius,  and  as  a  help, 
in  the  manner  of  gold  being  the  meridian  line  of  worldly  wealth, 
how  he  differs  from  Milton.  And  here  I  have  nothing  but  sur- 
mises, from  an  uncertainty  whether  Milton's  apparently  less 
an.xiety  for  humanity  proceeds  from  his  seeing  further  or  not  than 
Wordsworth,  and  whether  Wordsworth  has,  in  truth,  epic  pas- 
sion, and  martyrs  himself  to  the  human  heart,  the  main  region  of 
his  song.  In  regard  to  his  genius  alone,  we  find  what  he  says 
true,  as  far  as  we  have  experienced,  and  we  can  judge  no  further 
but  by  larger  experience ;  for  axioms  in  philosophy  are  not 
axioms  till  they  have  been  proved  upon  our  pulses.  We  read 
fine  things,  but  never  feel  them  to  the  full  until  we  have  gone 
[over]  the  same  steps  as  the  author.  1  know  this  is  not  plain  ; 
you  will  know  exactly  my  meaning  when  I  say  that  now  I  shall 
relish  '•  Hamlet "  more  than  I  ever  have  done — or  better.  You 
are  sensible  jio  man  can  set  down  venery  as  a  bestial  or  joyless 
thing  until  he  is  sick  of  it,  and  therefore  all  philosophizing  on  it 
would  be  mere  wording.  Until  we  are  sick,  we  understand  not; 
in  fine,  as  Byron  says,  "  Knowledge  is  sorrow  ;"  and  I  go  on  to 


98  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

say  that  "  Sorrow  is  wisdom ;"  and  further,  for  aught  we  can 
know  for  certainty,  "  Wisdom  is  folly."  So  you  see  how  I  have 
run  away  from  Wordsworth  and  Milton,  and  shall  still  run  away 
from  what  was  in  my  head  to  observe,  that  some  kind  of  letters 
are  good  squares,  others  handsome  ovals,  others  orbicular,  others 
spheroid — and  why  should  not  there  be  another  species  with  two 
rough  edges,  like  a  rat-trap  ?  I  hope  you  will  find  all  my  long 
letters  of  that  species,  and  all  will  be  well  ;  for  by  merely  touch- 
ing the  spring  delicately  and  ethereally,  the  rough-edged  will  fly 
immediately  into  a  proper  compactness ;  and  thus  you  may  make 
a  good  wholesome  loaf,  with  your  own  leaven  in  it,  of  my  frag- 
ments. If  you  cannot  find  this  said  rat-trap  suflaciently  tractable, 
alas !  for  me,  it  being  an  impossibility  in  grain  for  my  ink  to 
stain  otherwise.  If  I  scribble  long  letters,  I  must  play  my  vaga- 
ries. I  must  be  too  heavy,  or  too  light,  for  whole  pages ;  I  must 
be  quaint,  and  free  of  tropes  and  figures ;  I  must  play  my 
draughts  as  I  please,  and  for  my  advantage  and  your  erudition, 
crown  a  white  with  a  black,  or  a  black  with  a  white,  and  move 
into  black  or  white,  far  and  near  as  I  please ;  I  must  go  from 
Hazlitt  to  Patmore,  and  make  Wordsworth  and  Coleman  play  at 
leap-frog,  or  keep  one  of  them  down  a  whole  half-holiday  at  fly- 
the-garter  ;  "from  Gray  to  Gay,  from  Little  to  Shakspeare."  I 
shall  resume  after  dinner. 

This  crossing  a  letter  is  not  without  its  association — for 
chequer-work  leads  us  naturally  to  a  milkmaid,  a  milkmaid  to 
Hogarth,  Hogarth  to  Shakspeare ;  Shakspeare  to  Hazlitt,  Hazlitt 
back  to  Shakspeare  ;  and  thus  by  merely  pulling  an  apron-string 
we  set  a  pretty  peal  of  chimes  at  work.  Let  them  chime  on, 
while,  with  your  patience,  I  will  return  to  Wordsworth — whether 
or  no  he  has  an  extended  vision  or  a  circumscribed  grandeur — 
whether  he  is  an  eagle  in  his  nest  or  on  the  wing ;  and,  to  be 
more  explicit,  and  to  sliow  you  how  tall  I  stand  by  the  giant,  I 
will  put  down  a  simile  of  human  life  as  far  as  I  now  perceive  it ; 
that  is,  to  the  point  to  which  I  say  we  both  have  arrived  at.  Well, 
I  compare  human  life  to  a  large  mansion  of  many  apartments, 
two  of  wliicli  I  can  only  describe,  the  doors  of  the  rest  being  as 
yet  shut  upon  me.     The  first  we  step  into  we  call  the  Infant,  or 


JOHN  KEATS.  99 


Thoughtless  Chamber,  in  which  we  remain  as  long  as  we  do  not 
tliink.  We  remain  there  a  long  while,  and  notwithstanding  the 
doors  of  the  second  chamber  remain  wide  open,  showing  a  bright 
appearance,  we  care  not  to  hasten  to  it,  but  are  at  length  imper- 
ceptibly impelled  by  the  awakening  of  the  thinking  principle 
within  us.  We  no  sooner  get  into  the  second  chamber,  which  I 
shall  call  the  Chamber  of  Maiden-thought,  than  we  become  in- 
toxicated with  the  light  and  the  atmosphere.  We  see  nothing 
but  pleasant  wonders,  and  think  of  delaying  there  for  ever  in  de- 
light. However,  among  the  effects  this  breathing  is  father  of,  is 
that  tremendous  one  of  sharpening  one's  vision  into  the  heart  and 
nature  of  man,  of  convincing  one's  nerves  that  the  world  is  full 
of  misery  and  heartbreak,  pain,  sickness,  and  oppression  ;  where- 
by this  Chamber  of  Maiden-thought  becomes  gradually  darkened, 
and  at  the  same  lime,  on  all  sides  of  it,  many  doors  are  set  open 
— but  all  dark — all  leading  to  dark  passages.  We  see  not  the 
balance  of  good  and  evil ;  we  are  in  a  mist,  we  are  in  that  state, 
we  feel  the  "  Burden  of  the  Mystery."  To  this  point  was  Words- 
worth come,  as  far  as  I  can  conceive,  when  he  wrote  "  Tintern 
Abbey,"  and  it  seems  to  me  that  his  genius  is  explorative  of  those 
dark  passages.  Now  if  we  live,  and  go  on  thinking,  we  too  shall 
explore  them.  He  is  a  genius  and  superior  [to]  us,  in  so  far  as 
he  can,  more  than  we,  make  discoveries  and  shed  a  light  in  them. 
Here  I  must  think  Wordsworth  is  deeper  than  Milton,  though  I 
think  it  has  depended  more  upon  the  general  and  gregarious  ad- 
vance of  intellect  than  individual  greatness  of  mind.  From  the 
"  Paradise  Lost,"  and  the  other  works  of  Milton,  I  hope  it  is  not 
too  presuming,  even  between  ourselves,  to  say,  that  his  philo- 
sophy, human  and  divine,  may  be  tolerably  understood  by  one 
not  much  advanced  in  years.  In  his  time.  Englishmen  were  just 
emancipated  from  a  great  superstition,  and  men  had  got  hold  of 
certain  points  and  resting-places  in  reasoning  which  were  too 
newly  born  to  be  doubted,  and  too  much  opposed  by  the  rest  of 
Europe,  not  to  be  thought  ethereal  and  authentically  divine.  Who 
could  gainsay  his  ideas  on  virtue,  vice,  and  chastity,  in  "  Comus," 
just  at  the  time  of  the  dismissal  of  a  hundred  social  disgraces  ? 
Who  would  not  rest  satisfied  with  his  hintings  at  good  and  evil  in 
the   "  Paradise  Lost,"    when  just  free  from  the   Inquisition  and 


lot  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

burning  in  Smithfield  ?  The  Reformation  produced  such  imme- 
diate and  great  benefits,  that  Protestantism  was  considered  under 
the  immediate  eye  of  Heaven,  and  ils  own  remaining  dogmas  and 
superstitions  then,  as  it  were,  regenerated,  constituted  those  rest- 
ing-places and  seeming  sure  points  of  reasoning.  From  that  I 
have  mentioned,  Milton,  whatever  he  may  have  thought  in  the 
sequel,  appears  to  have  been  content  with  these  by  his  writings. 
He  did  not  think  with  the  human  heart  as  Wordsworth  has  done; 
yet  Milton,  as  a  philosopher,  had  surely  as  great  powers  as 
Wordsworth.  What  is  then  to  be  inferred  ?  O  !  many  tilings  : 
it  proves  there  is  really  a  grand  march  of  intellect ;  it  proves 
that  a  miglity  Providence  subdues  the  mightiest  minds  to  the 
service  of  the  time  being,  whether  it  be  in  human  knowledge  or 
religion. 

I  have  often  pitied  a  tutor  who  has  to  hear  "  Norn.  Musa"  so 
often  dinn'd  into  his  ears  :  I  hope  you  may  not  have  the  same  pain 
in  this  scribbling — I  may  have  read  these  things  before,  but  I 
never  had  even  a  thus  dim  perception  of  them ;  and,  moreover,  I 
like  to  say  my  lesson  to  one  who  will  endure  my  tediousness,  for 
my  own  sake. 

After  all  there  is  something  real  in  the  world — Moore's  pres- 
ent to  Hazlitt  is  real.  1  like  that  Moore,  and  am  glad  I  saw  him 
at  the  Theatre  just  before  I  left  town.  Tom  has  spit  a  leetle  blood 
this  afternoon,  and  that  is  rather  a  damper — but  I  know — the  truth 
is,  there  is  something  real  in  the  world.  Your  third  Chamber  of 
Life  shall  be  a  lucky  and  a  gentle  one,  stored  with  the  wine  of 
Love  and  the  bread  of  Friendsliip. 

When  you  see  George,  if  he  should  not  have  received  a  letter 
from  me,  tell  him  he  will  find  one  at  home  most  likely.  Tell 
Bailey  I  hope  soon  to  see  him.  Remember  me  to  all.  The 
leaves  have  been  out  here  for  many  a  day.  I  have  written  to 
George  for  the  first  stanzas  of  my  "  Isabel."  I  shall  have  them 
soon,  and  will  copy  the  whole  out  for  you. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


JOHX  KEATS.  101 


Hampstead,  25  3Iay,  1818. 

My  Dear  Bailey, 

I  should  have  answered  your  letter  on  the  moment, 
if  I  could  have  said  Yes,  to  your  invitation.  What  hinders  me  is 
insuperable  :  I  will  tell  it  at  a  little  length.  You  know  my  bro- 
ther George  has  been  out  of  employ  for  some  time.  It  has 
weighed  very  much  upon  him,  and  driven  him  to  scheme  and 
turn  over  things  in  his  mind.  The  result  has  been  his  resolution 
to  emigrate  to  the  back  settlements  of  America,  become  farmer, 
and  work  with  his  own  hands,  after  purchasing  fourteen  hundred 
acres  of  the  American  Government.  This,  for  many  reasons, 
has  met  with  my  entire  consent — and  the  chief  one  is  this;  he 
is  of  too  independent  and  liberal  a  mind  to  get  on  in  trade  in 
this  country,  in  which  a  generous  man  with  a  scanty  resource 
must  be  ruined.  I  would  .sooner  he  should  till  the  ground  than 
bow  to  a  customer.  There  is  no  choice  with  him  :  he  could 
not  bring  himself  to  the  latter.  I  could  not  consent  to  his  go- 
ing alone  ; — no ;  but  that  objection  is  done  away  with  :  he  will 
marry,  before  he  sets  sail,  a  young  lady  he  has  known  for  seve- 
ral years,  of  a  nature  liberal  and  high  spirited  enough  to  follow 
him  to  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi.  He  will  set  off  in  a  month 
or  six  weeks,  and  you  will  see  how  I  should  wish  to  pass  that 
time  with  him — And  then  I  must  set  out  on  a  journey  of  my 
own.  Brown  and  I  are  going  on  a  pedestrian  tour  through  the 
north  of  England,  and  Scotland,  as  far  as  John  o'Grot's. 

I  have  this  morning  such  a  lethargy  that  I  cannot  write.  The 
reason  of  my  delaying  is  oftentimes  for  this  feeling, — I  wait  for 
a  proper  temper.  Now  you  ask  for  an  immediate  answer,  I  do 
not  like  to  wait  even  till  to-morrow.  However,  T  am  now  so  de- 
pressed that  I  have  not  an  idea  to  put  to  paper ;  my  hand  feels 
like  lead.  And  yet  it  is  an  unpleasant  numbness;  it  does  not 
take  away  the  pain  of  existence.      I  don't  know  what  to  write. 

[j\Io/uhiy.'\ — You  see  how  1  have  delayed ;  and  even  now  I 
have  but  a  confused  idea  of  what  I  should  be  about.  My  intel- 
lect must  be  in  a  degenerating  state — it  must  be — for  when  I 
should  be  writing  about — God  knows  what — I  am  troubling  you 
with  moods  of  my  own  mind,  or  rather  body,  for  mind  there  is 
none.     I  am  in  that  temper  that  if  I  were  under  water  I  would 


102  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

scarcely  kick  to  come  up  to  the  top.  I  know  very  well  'tis  all 
nonsense.  '  In  a  short  time  I  hope  I  shall  be  in  a  temper  to 
feel  sensibly  your  mention  of  my  book.  In  vain  have  I  waited 
till  Monday  to  have  any  interest  in  that,  or  any  thing  else.  I 
feel  no  spur  at  my  brother's  going  to  America,  and  am  almost 
stony-hearted  about  his  wedding.  All  this  will  blow  over.  All 
I  am  sorry  for  is  having  to  write  to  you  in  such  a  time — but  I 
cannot  force  my  letters  in  a  hotbed.  I  could  not  feel  comforta- 
ble in  making  sentences  for  you.  I  am  your  debtor  ;  I  must 
ever  remain  so ;  nor  do  I  wish  to  be  clear  of  my  rational  debt  : 
there  is  a  comfort  in  throwing  oneself  on  the  charity  of  one's 
friends — 'tis  like  the  albatross  sleeping  on  its  wings.  I  will  be 
to  you  wine  in  the  cellar,  and  the  more  modestly,  or  rather,  indo- 
lently, I  retire  into  the  backward  bin,  the  more  Falerne  will  I 
be  at  the  drinking.  There  is  one  thing  I  must  mention :  my 
brother  talks  of  sailing  in  a  fortnight ;  if  so,  I  will  most  probably 
be  with  you  a  week  before  I  set  out  for  Scotland.  The  middle 
of  your  first  page  should  be  sufficient  to  rouse  me.  What  I  said 
is  true,  and  I  have  dreamt  of  your  mention  of  it,  and  my  not 
answering  it  has  weighed  on  me  since.  If  I  come,  I  will  bring 
your  letter,  and  hear  more  fully  your  sentiments  on  one  or  two 
points.  I  will  call  about  the  Lectures  at  Taylor's,  and  at  Little 
Britain,  to-morrow.  Yesterday  I  dined  with  Hazlitt,  Barnes  and 
Wilkie,  at  Haydon's.  The  topic  was  the  Duke  of  Wellington — 
very  amusingly  pro-and-con'd.  Reynolds  has  been  getting  much 
better  ;  and  Rice  may  begin  to  crow,  for  he  got  a  little  so-so 
at  a  party  of  his,  and  was  none  the  worse  for  it  the  next  morning. 
I  hope  I  shall  soon  see  you,  for  we  must  have  many  new  thoughts 
and  feelings  to  analyze,  and  to  discover  whether  a  little  more 
knowledge  has  not  made  us  more  ignorant. 

Yours  affectionately, 

John  Keats. 

London,  June  10,  1818. 
My  Dear  Bailey, 

I  have  been  very  much  gratified  and  very  much  hurt 
by  your  letters  in  the  Oxford  Paper;  because,  independent  of  that 
unlawful  and  mortal  feeling  of   pleasure  at  praise  there  is  a  glory 


JOHN  KEATS.  103 


in  enthusiasm  ;  and  because  the  world  is  malignant  enough  to  chuc- 
kle at  the  most  honorable  simplicity.  Yes,  on  my  soul,  my  dear 
Bailey,  you  are  too  simple  for  the  world,  and  that  idea  makes  me 
sick  of  it.  How  is  it  that,  by  extreme  opposites,  we  have,  as  it 
were,  got  discontented  nerves  ?  You  have  all  your  life  (I  think 
so)  believed  every  body.  I  have  suspected  every  body.  And, 
although  you  have  been  so  deceived,  you  make  a  simple  appeal. 
The  world  has  something  else  to  do,  and  I  am  glad  of  it.  Were 
it  in  my  choice,  I  would  reject  a  Petrarchal  coronation — on  ac- 
count of  my  dying  day,  and  because  women  have  cancers.  I 
should  not,  by  rights,  speak  in  this  tone  to  you,  for  it  is  an  incen- 
diary spirit  that  would  do  so.  Yet  I  am  not  old  enough  or  mag- 
nanimous enough  to  annihilate  self — and  it  would,  perhaps,  be 
paying  you  an  ill  compliment.  J  was  in  hopes,  some  little  time 
back,  to  be  able  to  relieve  your  dullness  by  my  spirits — to  point 
out  things  in  the  world  worth  your  enjoyment — and  now  I  am 
never  alone  without  rejoicing  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  death — 
without  placing  my  ultimate  in  the  glory  of  dying  for  a  great 
human  purpose.  Perhaps  if  my  affairs  were  in  a  different  state  I 
should  not  have  written  the  above — you  shall  judge:  I  have  two 
brothers;  one  is  driven,  by  the  "  burden  of  society,"  to  America; 
the  other,  with  an  exquisite  love  of  life,  is  in  a  lingering  state. 
My  love  for  my  brothers,  from  the  early  loss  of  our  parents,  and 
even  from  earlier  misfortunes,  has  grown  into  an  affection,  "  pass- 
ing the  love  of  women."  I  have  been  ill-tempered  with  them,  I 
have  vexed  them, — but  the  thought  of  them  has  always  stifled  the 
impression  that  any  woman  might  otherwise  have  made  upon  me. 
I  have  a  sister  too  ;  and  may  not  follow  them  either  to  America 
or  to  the  grave.  Life  must  be  undergone  ;  and  I  certainly  derive 
some  consolation  from  the  thought  of  writing  one  or  two  more  po- 
ems before  it  ceases. 

I  have  heard  some  hints  of  your  retiring  to  Scotland.  I  should 
like  to  know  your  feeling  on  it :  it  seems  rather  remote.  Perhaps 
Gleig  will  have  a  duty  near  you.  I  am  not  certain  whether  I 
shall  be  able  to  go  any  journey,  on  account  of  my  brother  Tom 
and  a  little  indisposition  of  my  own.  If  I  do  not,  you  shall  see 
me  soon,  if  not  on  my  return,  or  I'll  quarter  myself  on  you  next 
winter.     I  had  known  my  sister-in-law  some  time  before  she  was 


101  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


my  sister,  and  was  vny  fond  of  her.  I  like  her  better  and  better. 
She  is  the  most,  disinterested  woman  I  ever  knew — that  is  to  say, 
she  goes  beyond  degrees  in  it.  To  see  an  entirely  disinterested 
girl  quite  happy  is  the  most  pleasant  and  extraordinary  thing  in 
the  world.  It  depends  upon  a  thousand  circumstances.  On  my 
word  it  is  extraordinary.  Women  must  want  imagination,  and 
they  may  thank  God  for  it ;  and  so  may  we,  that  a  delicate  being 
can  feel  happy  without  any  sense  of  crime.  It  puzzles  me,  and  I 
have  no  sort  of  logic  to  comfort  me  :  I  shall  think  it  over.  I  am 
not  at  home,  and  your  letter  being  there  I  cannot  look  it  over  to 
answer  any  particular — only,  I  must  say  I  feel  that  passage  of 
Dante.  If  I  take  any  book  with  me  it  shall  be  those  minute  vol- 
umes of  Carey,  for  they  will  go  into  the  aptest  corner. 

Reynolds  is  getting,  I  may  say,  robust.  His  illness  has  been 
of  service  to  him.  Like  every  one  just  recovered,  he  is  high-spir- 
ited. I  hear  also  good  accounts  of  Rice.  With  respect  to  do- 
mestic literature,  the  "  Edinburgh  Magazine,"  in  another  blow-up 
against  Hunt,  calls  me  "  the  amiable  Mister  Keats,"  and  I  have 
more  than  a  laurel  from  the  "  Quarterly  Reviewers,"  for  they 
have  smothered  me  in  "  Foliage."  I  want  to  read  you  my  "  Pot 
of  Basil."  If  you  go  to  Scotland,  I  should  much  like  to  read  it 
there  to  you,  among  the  snows  of  next  winter.  My  brother's  re- 
membrance to  you. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


"Foliage"  was  a  volume  ofpoeins  chiefly  classical,  just  pub- 
lished by  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt.  It  contained  the  following  sonnets  to 
Keats.  The  "  Edinburgh  Magazine"  was  Blackwood's,  and  had 
begun  the  series  of  articles  on  the  "  Cockney  School,"  to  which 
further  allusion  will  be  made. 


SONNET  TO  JOHN  KEATS. 

'Tis  well  you  ihink  me  truly  one  of  those 
Whose  sense  discerns  tiie  loveliness  of  thing 
For  surely  as  I  feel  the  bird  that  sings 


JOHN  KEATS.  105 


Behind  the  leaves,  or  dawn  as  it  up  grows. 

Or  the  rich  bee  rejoicing  aa  he  goes, 

Or  the  glad  issue  of  emerging  springs, 

Or  overhead  the  glide  of  a  dove's  wings, 

Or  turf,  or  tree,  or,  midst  of  all,  repose : 

And  surely  as  I  feel  things  lovelier  still. 

The  human  look,  and  the  harmonious  form 

Containing  woman,  and  the  smile  in  ill, 

And  such  a  heart  as  Charles's,*  wise  and  warm, — 

As  surely  as  all  this,  I  see,  ev'n  now, 

Young  Keats,  a  flowering  laurel  on  your  brow. 


ON  RECEIVING  A  CROWN  OF  IVY  FROM  THE  SAME. 

A  crown  of  ivy  !     I  submit  my  head 

To  the  young  hand  that  gives  it — young,  'tis  true. 

But  with  a  right,  for 'tis  a  poet's  too. 

How  pleasant  the  leaves  feel !  and  how  they  spread 

With  their  broad  angles,  like  a  nodding  shed 

Over  both  eyes  I  and  how  complete  and  new. 

As  on  my  hand  1  lean,  to  feel  them  strew 

My  sense  with  freshness — Fancy's  rustling  bed  ! 

Tress-tossing  girls,  with  smell  of  flowers  and  grapes 

Come  dancing  by,  and  downward  piping  cheeks. 

And  up-thrown  cymbals,  and  Silenus  old 

Lumpishly  borne,  and  many  trampling  shapes, — 

And  lastly,  with  his  bright  eyes  on  her  bent, 

Bacchus — whose  bride  has  of  his  hand  fast  hold. 


ON  THE  SAME. 


It  is  a  lofty  feeling  and  a  kind. 

Thus  to  be  topped  with  leaves  ; — to  have  a  sense 

Of  honor-sh!ided  thought — an  influence 

As  from  great  Nature's  fingers,  and  be  twined 

With  her  old,  sacred,  verdurous  ivy-bind, 

*  Charles  Cowden  Clarke. 


106  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

As  though  she  hallowed  with  that  sylvan  fence 

A  head  that  bows  to  her  benevolence, 

'Midst  pomp  of  fancied  trumpets  in  the  wind. 

'Tis  what's  within  us  crowned.     And  kind  and  great 

Are  all  the  conquering  wishes  it  inspires, — 

Love  of  things  lasting,  love  of  the  tall  woods. 

Love  of  love's  self,  and  ardor  for  a  state 

Of  natural  good  befitting  such  desires, 

Towns  without  gain,  and  haunted  solitudes. 

Whatever  extravagance  a  stranger  might  find  in  these  verses, 
was  probably  justified  to  the  Poet  by  the  author's  friendship,  and 
in  the  Preface  to  "  Foliage  '"  there  is,  among  other  ingenious 
criticisms,  a  passage  on  Shakspearc's  scholarship,  which  seems 
to  me  to  have  more  than  an  accidental  bearing  on  the  kind  of 
classical  knowledge  which  Keats  really  possessed.  "  Though 
not  a  scholar,"  writes  Mr.  Hunt,  "  he  needed  nothing  more  than 
the  description  given  by  scholars,  good  or  inditferent,  in  order  to 
pierce  back  at  once  into  all  the  recesses  of  the  original  country. 
They  told  him  where  they  had  been,  and  he  was  there  in  an  in- 
stant, though  not  in  the  track  of  their  footing  ; — Battendo  Vali 
verso  Vaureafronde.  The  truth  is,  he  felt  the  Grecian  mythology 
not  as  a  set  of  school-boy  common-places  which  it  was  thought 
wrong  to  give  up,  but  as  something  which  it  requires  more  than 
mere  scholarship  to  understand — as  the  elevation  of  the  external 
world  and  of  accomplished  humanity  to  the  highest  pitch  of  the 
graceful,  and  as  embodied  essences  of  all  the  grand  and  lovely  qua- 
lities of  nature.  His  description  of  Proserpine  and  her  flowers,  in 
the  '  Winter's  Tale,'  of  the  characteristic  beauties  of  some  of  the 
Gods  in  '  Hamlet,'  and  that  single  couplet  in  tiie  '  Tempest,' 

'  Ye  nymphs  called  Naiads  of  the  wandering  brooks, 
With  your  sedged  crowns  and  ever  harmless  looks,' 

are  in  the  deepest  taste  of  antiquity,  and  show  that  all  great  poets 
look  at  themselves  and  the  fine  world  about  them  in  the  same 
clear  and  ever-living  fountains." 

Every  word  of  this  might  have  applied  to  Keats,  who,  at  this 
time,  himself  seems  to  have  been  studying  Shakspeare  with  the 
greatest  diligence.     Captain  Medwin,  in  his  "  Life  of  Shelley," 


JOHN  KEATS.  107 


mentions  that  he  has  seen  a  folio  edition  of  Shakspeare  with 
Keats's  annotations,  and  he  gives  as  a  specimen  part  of  Agamem- 
non's speech  in  "  Troilus  and  Cressida," — 

"  Sith  every  action  that  has  gone  before, 
Whereof  we  have  record,  trial  did  draw. 
Bias,  and  thwart,  not  answering  the  aim. 
And  that  unbodied  figure  of  the  thought 
That  gave  it  surmised  shape." 

On  which  Keats  remarks  : — "  The  genius  of  Shakspeare  was  an 
innate  universality  ;  wherefore  he  laid  the  achievements  of  hu- 
man intellect  prostrate  beneath  his  indolent  and  kingly  gaze  :  he 
could  do  easily  men's  utmost — his  plan  of  tasks  to  come  was 
not  of  this  world.  If  what  he  proposed  to  do  hereafter  would  not, 
in  the  idea,  answer  the  aim,  how  tremendous  must  have  been  his 
conception  of  ultimates  !" 


The  agreeable  diversion  to  his  somewhat  monotonous  life  by 
a  walking-tour  through  the  Lakes  and  Highlands  with  his  friend 
Mr.  Brown  was  now  put  into  execution.  They  set  off  in  the 
middle  of  June  for  Liverpool,  where  they  parted  with  George 
Keats,  who  embarked  with  his  wife  for  America.  On  the  road 
he  stopped  to  see  a  former  fellow-student  at  Guy's,  who  was  set- 
tled as  a  surgeon  in  a  country  town,  and  whom  he  informed  that  he 
had  definitively  abandoned  that  profession  and  intended  to  devote 
himself  to  poetry.  Mr.  Stephens  remembers  that  he  seemed 
much  delighted  with  his  new  sister-in-law,  who  was  a  person  of 
most  agreeable  appearance,  and  introduced  her  with  evident  satis- 
faction. From  Lancaster  they  started  on  foot,  and  Mr.  Brown 
has  recorded  the  rapture  of  Keats  when  he  became  sensible,  for 
the  first  time,  of  the  full  effect  of  mountain  scenery.  At  a  turn 
of  the  road  above  Bowness,  where  the  Lake  of  Windermere  first 
bursts  on  the  view,  he  stopped  as  if  stupified  with  beauty.  That 
evening  he  read  aloud  the  Pot  m  of  the  "  Pot  of  Basil,"  which  he 
had  just  completed.  His  disappointment  at  missing  Wordsworth 
was  very  great,  and  he  hardly  concealed  his  vexation  when  he 
found  that  lie  owed  the  privation  to  the  interest  which  the  elder 


108  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

poet  was  taking  in  the  general  Election.  This  annoyance  would 
perhaps  have  been  diminished  if  the  two  poets  had  happened  to  be 
on  the  same  side  in  politics  ;  but,  as  it  was,  no  views  and  objects 
could  be  more  opposed. 

A  portion  of  a  rambling  journal  of  this  tour  remains  in  vari- 
ous letters. 

Keswick,  June  29,  [1818.] 
My  Dear  Tom, 

I  cannot  make  my  journal  as  distinct  and  actual  as 
I  could  wish,  from  having  been  engaged  in  writing  to  George,  and 
therefore  I  must  tell  you,  witliout  circumstance,  that  we  proceeded 
from  Ambleside  to  Rydal,  saw  the  waterfalls  there,  and  called  on 
Wordsworth,  who  was  not  at  home,  nor  was  any  one  of  his  family. 
I  wrote  a  note,  and  left  it  on  the  mantel-piece.  Thence,  on  we 
came  to  the  foot  of  Helvellyn,  where  we  slept,  but  could  not  as- 
cend it  for  the  mist.  I  must  mention  that  from  Rydal  we  passed 
Thirlswater,  and  a  fine  pass  in  the  mountains.  From  Helvellyn 
we  came  to  Keswick  on  Derwent  Water.  The  approach  to  Der- 
went  Water  surpassed  Windermere  ;  it  is  richly  wooded,  and 
shut  in  with  rich-toned  mountains.  From  Helvellyn  to  Keswick 
was  eight  miles  to  breakfast,  after  which  we  took  a  complete  cir- 
cuit of  the  lake,  going  about  ten  miles,  and  seeing  on  our  way  the 
fall  of  Lodore.  I  had  an  easy  climb  among  the  streams,  about 
the  fragments  of  rocks,  and  should  have  got,  I  think,  to  the  sum- 
mit, but  unfortunately  I  was  damped  by  slipping  one  leg  into  a 
squashy  hole.  There  is  no  great  body  of  water,  but  the  accom- 
paniment is  delightful ;  for  it  oozes  out  from  a  cleft  in  perpendic- 
ular rocks,  all  fledged  with  ash  and  other  beautiful  trees.  It  is  a. 
strange  thing  how  they  got  there.  At  the  south  end  of  the  Lake, 
the  mountains  of  Borrowdale  are  perhaps  as  fine  as  any  thing  we 
have  seen.  On  our  return  from  this  circuit,  we  ordered  dinner, 
and  set  forth  about  a  mile  and  a  half  on  the  Penrith  road,  to  see 
the  Druid  temple.  We  had  a  fag  up  hill,  rather  too  near  dinner 
time,  which  was  rendered  void  by  the  gratification  of  seeing  those 
aged  stones  on  a  gentle  rise  in  the  midst  of  the  mountains,  which 
at  that  time,  darkened  all  round,  except  at  the  fresh  opening  of 
the  vale  of  St.  John.     We  went  to  bed  rather  fatigued,  but  not 


JOHN  KEATS.  109 


so  much  so  as  to  hinder  us  getting  up  this  morning  to  mount  Skid- 
daw.  It  promised  all  along  to  be  fair,  and  we  had  fagged  and 
tugged  nearly  to  the  top,  when,  at  half  past  six,  there  came  a 
mist  upon  us,  and  shut  out  the  view.  We  did  not,  liowever,  lose 
any  thing  by  it :  we  were  high  enough  without  mist  to  see  the 
coast  of  Scotland,  the  Irish  Sea,  the  hills  beyond  Lancaster,  and 
nearly  all  the  large  ones  of  Cumberland  and  Westmoreland,  par- 
ticularly Helvellyn  and  Scawfell.  It  grew  colder  and  colder  as 
we  ascended,  and  we  were  glad,  at  about  three  parts  of  the  way, 
t()  taste  a  little  rum  which  the  guide  brought  with  him,  mixed, 
mind  ye,  with  mountain  water.  I  took  two  glasses  going  and  one 
returning.  It  is  about  six  miles  from  where  I  am  writing  to  the 
top  ;  so  we  have  walked  ten  miles  before  breakfast  to-day.  We 
went  up  with  two  others,  very  good  sort  of  fellows.  All  felt,  on 
arising  into  the  cold  air,  that  same  elevation  which  a  cold  bath 
gives  one.     I  felt  as  if  I  were  going  to  a  tournament. 

Wordsworth's  house  is  situated  just  on  the  rise  of  the  foot  of 
Mount  Rydal ;  his  parlor-window  looks  directly  down  Winder- 
mere. I  do  not  think  I  told  you  how  fine  the  Vale  of  Grassmere 
is,  and  how  I  discovered  "  the  ancient  woman  seated  on  Helm 
Crag." 

Ju/y  Isl. — We  are  this  morning  at  Carlisle.  After  Skiddaw, 
we  walked  to  Treby,  the  oldest  market  town  in  Cumberland, 
where  we  were  greatly  amused  by  a  country  dancing-school, 
holden  at  the  "Tun."  It  was  indeed  "no  new  cotillion  fresh 
from  France."  No,  they  kickit  and  jumpit  with  meddle  extraor- 
dinary, and  whiskit,  and  friskit,  and  toed  it,  and  go'd  it,  and 
twirl'd  it,  and  whirl'd  it,  and  stamped  it,  and  sweated  it,  tattooing 
the  floor  like  mad.  Tiie  ditrerence  between  our  country  dances 
and  these  Scottish  figures  is  about  the  same  as  leisurely  stirring 
a  cup  of  tea  and  beating  up  a  batter  pudding.  I  was  extremly 
gratified  to  think  that  if  I  had  pleasures  they  knew  nothing  of, 
they  had  also  some  into  which  I  could  not  po.ssibly  enter.  I  hope 
I  shall  not  return  without  having  got  the  Highland  fling.  There 
was  as  fine  a  row  of  boys  and  girls  as  you  ever  saw  ;  some  beau- 
tiful faces,  and  one  exquisite  mouth.  I  never  felt  so  near  the  glory 
of  patriotism,  the  glory  of  making,  by  any  means,  a  country  hap- 
pier,    This  is  what  I  like  better  than  scenery.     I  fear  our  con- 

6 


110  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

tinued  moving  from  place  to  place  will  prevent  our  becoming 
learned  in  village  affairs  ;  we  are  mere  creatures  of  rivers, 
lakes,  and  mountains.  Our  yesterday's  journey  was  from  Treby 
to  Wigton,  and  from  Wigton  to  Carlisle.  The  cathedral  does  not 
appear  very  fine  ;  the  castle  is  very  ancient,  and  of  brick.  The 
city  is  very  various;  old,  whitewashed,  narrow  streets,  broad, 
red-brick  ones,  more  modern.  I  will  tell  you  anon  whether  the 
inside  of  the  cathedral  is  worth  looking  at.  It  is  built  of  sandy 
red  stone,  or  brick.  We  have  now  walked  114  miles,  and  are 
merely  a  little  tired  in  the  thighs,  and  a  little  blistered.  We 
shall  ride  38  miles  to  Dumfries,  when  we  shall  linger  awhile 
about  Nithsdale  and  Galloway.  I  have  written  two  letters  to 
Liverpool.  I  found  a  letter  from  sister  George ;  very  delightful 
indeed  :  I  shall  preserve  it  in  the  bottom  of  my  knapsack  for  you. 

July  2nd. 


ON  VISITING  THE  TOMB  OF  BURNS. 

The  town,  the  church-yard,  and  the  setting  sun. 

The  clouds,  the  trees,  the  rounded  hills  all  seem. 

Though  beautiful,  cold — strange — as  in  a  dream, 

I  dreamed  long  ago,  now  new  begun. 

The  short-lived,  paly,  Summer  is  but  won 

From  Winter's  ague,  for  one  hour's  gleam  ; 

Though  sapphire-warm,  their  stars  do  never  beam  : 

All  is  cold  Beauty  ;  pain  is  never  done  : 

For  who  has  mind  to  relish,  Minos-wise, 

The  Real  of  Beauty,  free  from  that  dead  hue 

Sickly  imagination  and  sick  pride 

Cast  wan  upon  it!     Burns!  with  honor  due 

I  oft  have  honor'd  tliee.     Great  shadow,  hide 

Thy  face  ;  I  sin  against  thy  native  skies. 

You  will  see  by  this  sonnet  that  I  am  at  Dumfries.  We  have 
dined  in  Scotland.  Burns's  tomb  is  in  the  church-yard  corner, 
not  very  much  to  my  taste,  though  on  a  scale  large  enough  to 
show  they  wanted  to  honor  him.  Mrs.  Burns  lives  in  this  place; 
most  likely  we  shall  see  her  to-morrow.  This  sonnet  I  have 
written  in  a  strange  mood,  half-asleep.     I  know  not  how  it  is,  the 


JOHN  KEATS.  Ill 


clouds,  the  sky,  the  houses,  all  seem  anti-Grecian  and  anti-Clmr- 
lemagnish.  I  will  endeavor  to  get  rid  of  my  prejudices  and  tell 
you  i'airly  about  the  Scotcli. 

In  Devonshire  they  say,  "Well,  where  be  ye  going?"  Hei'e 
it  is,  "  How  is  it  wi'  yoursel  ?"  A  man  on  the  coach  said  the 
horses  took  a  "  hellish  heap  o' drivin  ;"  the  same  fellow  pointed 
out  Burns's  Tomb  with  a  deal  of  life — "  There  !  de  ye  see  it, 
amang  the  trees — white,  wi'  a  roond  tap  ?"  The  first  well-dressed 
Scotchman  we  had  any  conversation  with,  to  our  surprise,  con- 
fessed himself  a  deist.  The  careful  manner  of  delivering  his 
opinions,  not  before  he  had  received  several  encouraging  hints 
from  us,  was  very  amusing.  Yesterday  was  an  immense  horse- 
fair  at  Dumfries,  so  that  we  met  numbers  of  men  and  women  on 
the  road,  the  women  nearly  all  barefoot,  with  their  shoes  and 
clean  stockings  in  hand,  ready  to  put  on  and  look  smart  in  the 
towns.  There  are  plenty  of  wretched  cottages  whose  smoke  has 
no  outlet  but  by  the  door.  We  have  now  begun  upon  whisky, 
called  here  "  whuskey," — very  smart  stuff  it  is.  Mixed  like  our 
liquors,  with  sugar  and  water,  'tis  called  toddy ;  very  pretty 
drink,  and  much  praised  by  Burns. 


Besides  the  above  sonnet,  Keats  wrote  another  in  the  whisky- 
shop,  into  which  the  cottage  where  Burns  was  born  was  converted, 
which  seems  to  me  much  the  better  of  the  two.  The  "  local 
color  "  is  strong  in  it :  it  might  have  been  written  where  "  Willie 
brewed  a  peck  o'  maut,"  and  its  geniality  would  have  delighted 
the  object  of  its  admiration.  Nevertheless  the  author  wrote  of  it 
to  Haydon  thus  disparagingly  : — 

"  Tlie  '  bonnie  Doon  '  is  the  sweetest  river  I  ever  saw — over- 
hung with  fine  trees  as  far  as  we  could  see.  We  stood  some  time 
on  the  '  brig  '  o'er  which  Tam  o'  Shanter  fled — we  took  a  pinch 
of  snuff  on  the  key  stone — then  we  proceeded  to  the  auld  Kirk  of 
Alloway.  Then  we  went  lo  the  cottage  in  which  Burns  was 
born  ;  there  was  a  board  to  that  effect  by  the  door's  side ;  it  had 
the  same  effect  as  the  same  sort  of  memorial  at  Stratford-upon- 
Avon.  We  drank  some  toddy  to  Burns's  memory  witli  an  old 
man  who  knew  him.     There  was  something  good  in  his  descrip- 


112  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

tion  of  Burns's  melancholy  the  last  time  he  saw  him.  I  was  de- 
termined to  write  a  sonnet  in  the  cottage  :  I  did,  but  it  was  so  bad 
I  cannot  venture  it  here." 

SONNET. 

This  mortal  body  of  a  thousand  days 

Now  fills,  0  Burns,  a  space  in  thine  own  room, 
Where  thou  didst  dream  alone  on  budded  bays, 

Happy  and  thoughtless  of  thy  day  of  doom  ! 
My  pulse  is  warm  with  thine  old  Barley-bree, 

My  head  is  light  with  pledging  a  great  soul, 
My  eyes  are  wandering,  and  I  cannot  see, 

Fancy  is  dead  and  drunken  at  its  goal  ; 
Yet  can  I  stamp  my  foot  upon  thy  floor. 

Yet  can  I  ope  thy  window-sash  to  find 
The  meadow  thou  hast  tramped  o'er  and  o'er — 

Yet  can  I  think  of  thee  till  thought  is  blind, — 
Yet  can  I  gulp  a  bumper  to  thy  name, — 
O  smile  among  the  shades,  for  this  is  fame! 

The  pedestrians  passed  by  Solway  Frith  through  that  delight- 
ful part  of  Kircudbrightshire,  the  scene  of  "  Guy  Mannering." 
Keats  had  never  read  the  novel,  but  was  much  struck  with  the 
character  of  Meg  Merrilies  as  delineated  to  him  by  Brown.  He 
seemed  at  once  to  realize  the  creation  of  the  novelist,  and,  sud- 
denly stopping  in  the  pathway,  at  a  point  where  a  profusion  of 
honeysuckles,  wild  rose,  and  fox-glove,  mingled  with  the  bramble 
and  broom  that  filled  up  the  spaces  between  the  shattered  rocks, 
he  cried  out,  "  Without  a  shadow  of  doubt  on  that  spot  has  old 
Meg  Merrilies  often  boiled  her  kettle." 

AucHiEKCAiKN,3(Z  July,  [1818.] 
My  Dear  Tobi, 

We  arc  now  in  Meg  Merrilies'  country,  and  have,  this 
morning,  passed  through  some  parts  exactly  suited  to  her.  Kir- 
cudbright County  is  very  beautiful,  very  wild,  with  craggy  hills, 
somewhat  in  tlic  Westmoreland  fashion.  We  have  come  down 
from  Dumfries  to  the  sea-coast  part  of  it.  The  following  song 
you  will  have  from  Dilke,  but  perhaps  you  would  like  it 
here : — 


JOHN  KEATS.  113 


Old  Meg  she  was  a  gipsy, 

And  lived  upon  the  moors  ; 
Her  bed  it  was  tl)e  brown  heath  turf, 

And  her  house  was  out  of  doors. 
Her  apples  were  swart  blackberries. 

Her  currants,  pods  o'  broom  ; 
Her  wine  was  dew  of  the  wild  white  rose. 

Her  book  a  church-yard  tomb. 

Her  brothers  were  the  craggy  hills, 

Her  sisters  larchen  trees  ; 
Alone  with  her  great  family 

She  lived  as  she  did  please. 
No  breakfast  had  she  many  a  morn. 

No  dinner  many  a  noon, 
And,  'stead  of  supper,  she  would  stare 

Full  hard  against  the  moon. 

But  every  mom,  of  woodbine  fresh 

She  made  her  garlanding, 
And,  every  night,  the  dark  glen  yew 

She  wove,  and  she  would  sing. 
And  with  her  fingers,  old  and  brown, 

She  plaited  mats  of  rushes. 
And  gave  them  to  the  cottagers  ' 

She  met  among  the  bushes. 

Old  Meg  was  brave  as  Margaret  Queen, 

And  tall  as  Amazon, 
An  old  red  blanket  cloak  she  wore, 

A  ship-hat  had  she  on : 
God  rest  her  aged  bones  somewhere  ! 

She  died  full  long  agone  ! 

Yesterday  was  passed  at  Kircudbright;  the  country  is  very 
rich,  very  fine,  and  with  a  little  of  Devon.  I  am  now  writing  at 
Newton  Stewart,  six  miles  from  Wigton.  Our  landlady  of  yes- 
terday said,  "very  few  Southerners  passed  hereaways."  The 
children  jabber  away,  as  if  in  a  foreign  language  ;  the  bare-footed 
girls  look  very  much  in  keeping, — I  mean  with  the  scenery  about 
them.  Brown  praises  their  cleanline.ss  and  appearance  of  comfort, 
the  neatness  of  their  cottages,  dec.  It  may  be.  They  are  very 
squat  among  trees  and  fern,  and  heath  and  broom,  on  levels, 
slopes  and  heights ;  but  I  wish  they  were  as  snug  as  those  up  the 


114  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Devonshire  valleys.  We  are  lodged  and  entertained  in  great 
varieties.  We  dined,  yesterday,  on  dirty  bacon,  dirtier  eggs,  and 
dirtiest  potatoes,  with  a  slice  of  salmon  ;  we  breakfast,  this  morn- 
ing, in  a  nice  carpeted  room,  with  sofa,  hair-bottomed  chairs,  and 
green-baized  mahogany.  A  spring  by  the  road-side  is  always 
welcome  :  we  drink  water  for  dinner,  diluted  with  a  gill  of 
whisky. 

July  6th. — Yesterday  morning  we  set  out  for  Glenluce,  going 
some  distance  round  to  see  some  rivers  :  they  were  scarcely  worth 
the  while.  We  went  on  to  Stranraer,  in  a  burning  sun,  and  had 
gone  about  six  miles  when  the  mail  overtook  us :  we  got  up,  were 
at  Port  Patrick  in  a  jiffey,  and  I  am  writing  now  in  little  Ireland. 
The  dialects  on  the  neighboring  shores  of  Scotland  and  Ireland 
are  much  the  same,  yet  I  can  perceive  a  great  difference  in  the 
nations,  from  the  chamber-maid  at  this  nate  Toone  kept  by  Mr. 
Kelly.  She  is  fair,  kind,  and  ready  to  laugh,  because  she  is  out 
of  the  horrible  dominion  of  the  Scotch  Kirk.  These  Kirk-men 
have  done  Scotland  good.  They  have  made  men,  women,  old 
men,  young  men,  old  women,  young  women,  boys,  girls,  and  all 
infants,  careful ;  so  that  they  are  formed  into  regular  phalanges 
of  savers  and  gainers.  Such  a  thrifty  army  cannot  fail  to  enrich 
their  country,  and  give  it  a  greater  appearance  of  comfort  than 
that  of  their  poor  rash  neighborhood.  These  Kirk-men  have  done 
Scotland  harm  ; — they  have  banished  puns,  love,  and  laughing.  To 
remind  you  of  the  fate  of  Burns : — poor,  unfortunate  fellow  !  his 
disposition  was  southern !  How  sad  it  is  when  a  luxurious  imagi- 
nation is  obliged,  in  self-defence,  to  deaden  its  delicacy  in  vulgarity 
and  in  things  attainable,  that  it  may  not  have  leisure  to  go  mad 
after  things  that  are  not !  No  man,  in  such  matters,  will  be  con- 
tent with  the  experience  of  others.  It  is  true  that  out  of  sufiering 
there  is  no  dignity,  no  greatness,  that  in  the  most  abstracted  pleas- 
ure there  is  no  lasting  happiness.  Yet,  who  would  not  like  to  dis- 
cover, over  again,  that  Cleopatra  was  a  gipsy,  Helen  a  rogue,  and 
Ruth  a  deep  one  ?  I  have  not  sufficient  reasoning  faculty  to  settle 
the  doctrine  of  thrift,  as  it  is  consistent  with  the  dignity  of  human 
society — with  the  happiness  of  cottagers  :  all  I  can  do  is  by  plump 
contrasts :  were  the  fingers  made  to  squeeze  a  guinea  or  a  white 
hand  ? — were  the  lips  made  to  hold  a  pen  or  a  kiss  ?     And  yet,  in 


JOHN  KEATS.  115 


cities,  man  is  shut  out  from  his  fellows  if  he  is  poor;  the  cottager 
must  be  very  dirty,  and  very  wretched,  if  she  be  not  thrifty — the 
present  state  of  society  demands  this,  and  this  convinces  me  that 
the  world  is  very  young,  and  in  a  very  ignorant  state.  We  live 
in  a  barbarous  age.  1  would  sooner  be  a  wild  deer,  than  a  girl 
under  the  dominion  of  the  Kirk  ;  and  I  would  sooner  be  a  wild 
hog,  than  be  the  occasion  of  a  poor  creature's  penance  before  those 
execrable  elders. 

It  is  not  so  far  to  the  Giant's  Causeway  as  we  supposed  :  we 
thought  it  seventy,  and  we  hear  it  is  only  forty-eight  miles ; — so 
we  shall  leave  one  of  our  knapsacks  here  at  Donaghadee,  take 
our  immediate  wants,  and  be  back  in  a  week,  when  we  shall 
proceed  to  the  county  of  Ayr.  In  the  packet,  yesterday,  we 
heard  some  ballads  from  two  old  men.  One  was  a  romance, 
which  seemed  very  poor ;  then  there  was  "  The  Battle  of  the 
Boyne,"  then  "  Robin  Huid,"  as  they  call  him — "  Before  the 
king  you  shall  go,  go,  go ;  before  the  king  you  shall  go." 

July  9th. — We  stopped  very  little  in  Ireland  ;  and  that  you 
may  not  have  leisure  to  marvel  at  our  speedy  return  to  Port  Pat- 
rick, I  will  tell  you  it  is  as  dear  living  in  Ireland  as  at  the  Hum- 
mums — thrice  the  expense  of  Scotland — it  would  have  cost  us  £15 
before  our  return  ;  moreover  we  found  those  forty-eiglit  miles  to 
be  Irish  ones,  which  reach  to  seventy  English  ;  so  having  walked 
to  Belfast  one  day,  and  back  to  Donaghadee  the  next,  we  left  Ire- 
land with  a  fair  breeze.  We  slept  last  night  at  Port  Patrick, 
when  I  was  gratified  by  a  letter  from  you.  On  our  walk  in  Ire- 
land, we  had  too  mucli  opportunity  to  see  the  worse  than  naked- 
ness, the  rags,  the  dirt,  and  misery,  of  the  poor  common  Irish.  A 
Scotch  cottage,  though  in  that  sometimes  the  smoke  has  no  exit 
but  at  the  door,  is  a  palace  to  an  Irish  one.  We  had  the  pleasure 
of  finding  our  way  through  a  peat-bog,  three  miles  long  at  least — 
dreary,  flat,  dank,  black,  and  spongy — here  and  there  were  poor 
dirty  creatures,  and  a  few  strong  men  cutting  or  carting  peat. 
We  heard,  on  passing  into  Belfast,  through  a  most  wretched  sub- 
urb, that  most  disgusting  of  all  noises,  worse  than  the  bag-pipes, 
the  laugh  of  a  monkey,  the  chatter  of  women,  the  scream  of  ma- 
caw— I  nvjixn  llie  sound  of  the  shuttle.  What  a  tremendous  diffi- 
culty is  the  improvement  of  such  people.     I  cannot  conceive  how 


116  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

a  mind  "  with  child  "  of  philanthropy  could  grasp  at  its  possi- 
bility— with  me  it  is  absolute  despair.  At  a  miserable  house  of 
entertainment,  half-way  between  Donaghadee  and  Belfast,  were 
two  men  sitting  at  whisky — one  a  laborer,  and  the  other  I  took  to 
be  a  drunken  weaver  :  the  laborer  took  me  to  be  a  Frenchman,  and 
the  other  hinted  at  bounty-money,  saying  he  was  ready  to  take  it. 
On  calling  for  the  letters  at  Port  Patrick,  the  man  snapped  out, 
"  What  regiment  ?"  On  our  return  from  Belfast  we  met  a  sedan 
— the  Duchess  of  Dunghill.  It  is  no  laughing  matter  though. 
Imagine  the  worst  dog-kennel  you  ever  saw,  placed  upon  two 
poles  from  a  mouldy  fencing.  In  such  a  wretched  thing  sat  a 
squalid  old  woman,  squat  like  an  ape  half-starved  from  a  scarcity 
of  biscuit  in  its  passage  from  Madagascar  to  the  Cape,  with  a  pipe 
in  her  mouth,  and  looking  out  with  a  round-eyed,  skinny-lidded 
inanity,  with  a  sort  of  horizontal  idiotic  movement  of  her  head : 
squat  and  lean  she  sat,  and  puffed  out  the  smoke,  while  two  rag- 
ged, tattered  girls  carried  her  along.  What  a  thing  would  be  a 
history  of  her  life  and  sensations  ;  I  shall  endeavor,  when  I  have 
thought  a  little  more,  to  give  you  my  idea  of  the  difference  be- 
tween the  Scotch  and  Irish.  The  two  Irishmen  I  mentioned  were 
speaking  of  their  treatment  in  England,  when  the  weaver  said — 
"  Ah  !  you  were  a  civil  man,  but  I  was  a  drinker." 
Till  further  notice,  you  must  direct  to  Inverness. 

Your  most  affectionate  brother, 

John. 


Returning  from  Ireland,  the  travelers  proceeded  northwards 
by  the  coast,  Ailsa  Rock  constantly  in  their  view.  That  fine 
object  appeared  to  them,  in  the  full  sunlight,  like  a  transparent 
tortoise  asleep  on  the  calm  water,  then,  as  they  advanced,  dis- 
playing its  lofty  shoulders,  and,  as  they  still  went  on,  losing  its 
distinctness  in  the  mountains  of  Arran  and  the  extent  of  Cantire 
that  rose  behind.     At  the  inn  at  Girvan  Keats  wrote  this 


JOHN  KEATS.  117 


SONNET  ON  AILS  A  ROCK/ 

Harken,  thou  craggy  ocean-pyramid. 

Give  answer  by  thy  voice — the  sea -fowls'  screams  ! 

When  were  thy  shoulders  mantled  in  liuge  streams  1 
When  from  the  sun  was  thy  broad  forehead  hid  ? 
How  long  is't  since  the  mighty  Power  bid 

Thee  heave  to  airy  sleep  from  fathom  dreams — 

Sleep  in  the  lap  of  thunder  or  sun'oeams — 
Or  when  gray  clouds  are  thy  cold  coverlid  ? 
Thou  answer's!  not  ;  for  thou  art  dead  asleep. 

Thy  life  is  but  two  dead  eternities. 
The  last  in  air,  the  former  in  the  deep  ! 

First  with  the  whales,  last  with  the  eagle-skies  ! 
Drown'd  wast  thou  till  an  earthquake  made  thee  steep, 

Another  cannot  wake  thy  giant  size  ! 


Mavbole,  Jw/y  11  [1818]. 
My  Dear  Revnolds, 

rU  not  run  over  tlic  ground  we  have  passed  ;  that 
would  be  nearly  as  bad  as  telling  a  dream — unless,  perhaps,  I  do 
it  in  the  manner  of  the  Laputaii  printing  press ;  that  is,  I  put 
down  mountains,  rivers,  lakes,  dells,  glens,  rocks,  with  beautiful, 
enchanting,  gothic,  picturesque,  fine,  delightful,  enchanting,  grand, 
sublime — a  few  blisters,  &c. — and  now  you  have  our  journey 
thus  far ;  where  I  begin  a  letter  to  you  because  I  am  approach- 
ing Burns's  cottage  very  fast.  We  have  made  continual  in- 
quiries from  the  time  we  left  the  tomb  at  Dumfries.  His  name, 
of  course,  is  known  all  about :  his  great  reputation  among  the 
plodding  people  is,  "  that  he  wrote  a  good  mony  sensible  things." 
One  of  the  pleasant  ways  of  annulling  self  is  approacliing  such  a 
shrine  as  the  Cottage  of  Burns  :  we  need  not  think  of  his  misery 
— that  is  all  gone,  bad  luck  to  it !  I  .shall  look  upon  it  hereafter 
with  unmixed  pleasure,  as  I  do  on  my  Stratford-on-Avon  day  with 
Bailey.  I  shall  fill  this  sheet  for  you  in  the  Bardie's  country, 
going  no  further  than  this,  till  I  got  to  the  town  of  Ayr,  which 
will  be  a  nine  miles'  walk  to  tea. 

•  In  the  collected  Works. 
6* 


1 18  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


Wc  were  talking  on  different  and  indifferent  things,  when,  on 
a  sudden,  we  turned  a  corner  upon  the  immediate  country  of  Ayr. 
The  sight  was  as  rich  as  possible.  I  had  no  conception  ihat  the 
native  place  of  Burns  was  so  beautiful ;  the  idea  I  had  was  more 
desolate :  his  "  Rigs  of  Barley"  seemed  always  to  me  but  a  few 
strips  of  green  on  a  cold  hill — Oh,  prejudice  ! — It  was  as  rich  as 
Devon.  I  endeavored  to  drink  in  the  prospect,  that  I  might  spin 
it  out  to  you,  as  the  silk-worm  makes  silk  from  mulberry  leaves. 
I  cannot  recollect  it.  Besides  all  the  beauty,  there  were  the 
mountains  of  Annan  Isle,  black  and  huge  over  the  sea.  We 
came  down  upon  every  thing  suddenly  ;  there  were  in  our  way 
the  "  bonny  Doon,"  with  the  brig  that  Tarn  o'  Shanter  crossed. 
Kirk  Alloway,  Burns's  Cottage,  and  then  the  Brigs  of  Ayr.  First 
we  stood  upon  the  Bridge  across  the  Doon,  surrounded  by  every 
phantasy  of  green  in  tree,  meadow,  and  hill  :  the  stream  of  the  Doon, 
as  a  farmer  told  us,  is  covered  with  trees  "  from  head  to  foot." 
You  know  those  beautiful  heaths,  so  fresh  against  the  weather  of 
a  summer's  evening ;  there  was  one  stretching  along  beiiind  the 
trees. 

I  wish  I  knew  always  the  liumor  my  friends  would  be  in  at 
opening  a  letter  of  mine,  to  suit  it  them  as  nearly  as  possible.  I 
could  always  find  an  egg-shell  for  melancholy,  and,  as  for  merri- 
ment, a  witty  humor  will  turn  any  tiling  to  account.  My  head 
is  sometimes  in  such  a  whirl  in  considerina;  the  million  likings 
and  antipathies  of  our  moments,  that  I  can  get  into  no  settled 
strain  in  my  letters.  My  wig!  Burns  and  sentimentality  coming 
across  you  and  Frank  Floodgate  in  the  office.  Oh,  Scenery,  that 
thou  shouldst  be  crushed  between  two  puns  !  As  for  them, 
I  venture  the  rascalliest  in  the  Scotch  region.  I  hope  Brown 
does  not  put  them  in  his  journal :  if  he  does,  I  must  sit  on  the 
cutty-stool  all  next  winter.  We  went  to  Kirk  Alloway.  "A 
prophet  is  no  propliet  in  his  own  country."  We  went  to  tiie  Cot- 
tage and  took  some  whisky.  I  wrote  a  sonnet  for  the  mere  sake 
of  writing  some  lines  under  the  roof:  they  are  so  bad  I  cannot 
transcribe  them.  The  man  in  the  cottage  was  a  great  bore  witli 
his  anecdotes.  I  hate  the  rascal.  His  life  consists  in  fuzy,  fuzzy, 
fuzziest.  He  drinks  glasses,  five  for  tiio  quarter,  and  twelve  for 
the  hour;  he  is  a  mahogany-faced  old  jackass  who  knew  Burns: 


JOHN  KEATS.  119 


he  ought  to  have  been  kicked  for  having  spoken  to  him.  He  calls 
himself"  a  curious  old  bitch,"  but  he  is  a  flat  old  dog.  I  should 
like  to  employ  Caliph  Vathek  to  kick  him.  Oh,  the  flummery 
of  a  birth-place  !  Cant !  cant !  cant !  It  is  enough  to  give  a  spirit 
the  guts-ache.  Many  a  true  word,  they  say,  is  spoken  in  jest — 
this  may  be  because  his  gab  hindered  my  sublimity :  the  flat  doo- 
made  me  write  a  flat  sonnet.  My  dear  Reynolds,  I  cannot  write 
about  scenery  and  visitings.  Fancy  is  indeed  less  than  present 
palpable  reality,  but  it  is  greater  than  remembrance.  You  would 
lift  your  eyes  from  Homer  only  to  see  close  before  you  the  real 
Isle  of  Tenedos.  You  would  rather  read  Homer  afterwards  than 
remember  yourself  One  song  of  Burns's  is  of  more  worth  to  you 
than  all  I  could  think  for  a  whole  year  in  his  native  country.  His 
misery  is  a  dead  weight  upon  the  nimbleness  of  one's  quill ;  I 
tried  to  forget  it — to  drink  toddy  without  any  care — to  write  a 
merry  sonnet — it  won't  do — he  talked,  he  drank  with  black- 
guards ;  he  was  miserable.  We  can  see  horribly  clear,  in  the 
works  of  such  a  man,  his  whole  life,  as  if  we  were  God's  spies. 
What  were  his  addresses  to  Jean  in  the  after  part  of  his  life  ?  I 
should  not  speak  so  to  you — Yet,  why  not  ?  You  are  not  in  the 
same  case — you  are  in  the  right  path,  and  you  shall  not  be  de- 
ceived. I  have  spoken  to  you  against  marriage,  but  it  was  gene- 
ral. The  prospect  in  these  matters  has  been  to  me  so  blank,  that 
I  have  not  been  unwilling  to  die.  I  would  not  now,  for  I  have 
inducements  to  live — I  must  see  my  little  nephews  in  America, 
and  1  must  see  you  marry  your  lovely  wife.  My  sensations  are 
sometimes  deadened  for  weeks  together — but,  believe  me,  I  have 
more  than  once  yearned  for  tlie  time  of  your  happiness  to  come, 
as  much  as  I  could  for  myself  after  the  lips  of  Juliet.  From  the 
tenor  of  my  occasional  rhodomontade  in  chit-chat,  you  might  have 
been  deceived  concerning  me  in  these  points.  Upon  my  soul,  I 
have  been  getting  more  and  more  close  to  you  every  day,  ever  since 
I  knew  you,  and  now  one  of  the  first  pleasures  I  look  to  is  your 
happy  marriage — the  more,  since  I  have  felt  the  pleasure  of  lov- 
ing a  sister-in-law.  I  did  not  think  it  possible  to  become  so  much 
attached  in  so  short  a  time.  Things  like  these,  and  they  are  real, 
have  made  me  resolve  to  have  a  care  of  my  health — you  must  be 
as  careful. 


120  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  rain  has  stopped  us  to-day  at  the  end  of  a  dozen  milfs> 
yet  we  hope  to  see  Loch  Lomond  the  day  after  to-morrow.  I 
will  piddle  out  my  information,  as  Rice  says,  next  winter,  at  any 
time  when  a  substitute  is  wanted  for  Vingt-un.  We  bear  the 
fatigue  very  well  :  twenty  miles  a  day,  in  general.  A  cloud 
came  over  us  in  getting  up  Skiddaw — I  hope  to  be  more  lucky  in 
Ben  Lomond — and  more  lucky  still  in  Ben  Nevis.  What  I  think 
you  would  enjoy  is,  picking  about  ruins,  sometimes  Abbey,  some- 
times Castle. 

Tell  my  friends  I  do  all  I  can  for  them,  that  is,  drink  their 
health  in  Toddy.  Perhaps  I  may  have  some  lines,  by  and  by,  to 
send  you  fresh,  on  your  own  letter. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


Part  of  the  next  letter  illustrates,  with  singular  felicity,  the 
peculiar  action  of  a  high  imagination  on  the  ordinary  relations  of 
the  sexes.  The  youthful  companions  of  Keats,  who  saw  how 
gentle  and  courteous  was  his  manner  to  women,  and  who  held  the 
common  belief  that  every  poet  was  essentially  sentimental,  could 
not  comprehend  his  frequent  avoidance  of  female  society,  and  the 
apparent  absence  of  any  engrossing  passion  ;  the  pardonable  con- 
ceit of  conscious  genius  suggested  itself  to  them  as  the  probable 
cause  of  this  dt-fective  sympathy,  and,  when  he  manifested  an  oc- 
casional interest  in  any  one  person,  it  was  attributed  rather  to 
satisfied  vanity  than  to  awakened  love.  But  the  careful  study  of 
the  poetical  character  at  once  disproves  these  superficial  interpre- 
tations, and  the  simple  statement  of  his  own  feelings  by  such  a 
man  as  Keats  is  a  valuable  addition  to  our  knowledge  of  the  most 
delicate  and  wonderful  ot  the  works  of  Nature — a  Poet's  heart. 
For  the  time  was  at  hand,  when  one  intense  affection  was  about 
to  absorb  his  entire  being,  and  to  hasten,  by  its  very  violence,  the 
calamitous  extinction  against  which  it  struggled  in  vain. 


JOHN  KEATS.  121 


Inverary,  Juhj  18,  [1818.] 

My  Dear  Bailey, 

The  only  day  I  have  liad  a  chance  of  seeing  you  when 
you  were  last  in  London  I  took  every  advantage  of — some  devil 
led  you  out  of  the  way.  NoVv  I  have  written  to  Reynolds  to  tell 
me  where  you  will  be  in  Cumberland — so  that  I  cannot  miss  you. 
And  here,  Bailey,  I  will  say  a  few  words,  written  in  a  sane  and 
sober  mind,  (a  very  scarce  thing  with  me,)  for  they  may,  here- 
after, save  you  a  great  deal  of  trouble  about  me,  which  you  do  not 
deserve,  and  for  which  I  ought  to  be  bastinadoed.  J  carry  all 
matters  to  an  extreme  ;  so  that  when  I  have  any  little  vexation,  it 
grows,  in  five  minutes,  into  a  theme  for  Sophocles.  Then,  and 
in  that  temper,  if  I  write  to  any  friend,  I  have  so  little  self-pos- 
session, that  1  give  him  matter  for  grieving,  at  the  very  time,  per- 
haps,  when  I  am  laughing  at  a  pun.  Your  last  letter  made  me 
blush  for  the  pain  I  had  given  you.  I  know  my  own  disposition 
so  well  that  I  am  certain  of  writing  many  times  hereafter  in  the 
same  strain  to  you  :  now,  you  know  how  far  to  believe  in  them. 
You  must  allow  for  Imagination.  1  know  I  shall  not  be  able  to 
help  it. 

I  am  sorry  you  are  grieved  at  my  not  continuing  my  visits  to 
Little  Britain.  Yet  I  think  I  have,  as  far  as  a  man  can  do  who 
has  books  to  read  and  subjects  to  think  upon.  For  that  reason  I 
have  been  no  where  else  except  to  VVentworth  Place,  so  nigh  at 
hand.  Moreover,  I  have  been  too  often  in  a  state  of  health  that 
made  it  prudent  not  to  hazard  the  night  air.  Yet,  further,  I  will 
confess  to  you  that  I  cannot  enjoy  society,  small  or  numerous.  I 
am  certain  that  our  fair  are  glad  I  should  come  for  the  mere  sake 
of  my  coming;  but  1  am  certain  I  bring  with  me  a  vexation  they 
are  better  without.  If  I  can  possibly,  at  any  time,  feel  my  tem- 
per coming  upon  me,  I  refrain  even  from  a  promised  visit.  I  am 
certain  I  have  not  a  right  feeling  towards  women — at  this  moment 
I  am  striving  to  be  just  to  them,  but  I  cannot.  Is  it  because  they 
fall  so  far  beneath  my  boyisli  imagination  ?  When  I  was  a 
school-boy  I  thought  a  fair  woman  a  pure  goddess  ;  my  mind  was 
a  soft  nest  in  which  some  one  of  them  slept,  though  she  knew  it 
not.  I  have  no  right  to  expect  more  than  their  reality.  I  thought 
them  ethereal,  above  men.     1  find  them  perhaps  equal — great  by 


122  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

comparison  is  very  small.  Insult  may  be  inflicted  in  more  ways 
than  by  word  or  action.  One  who  is  tender  of  being  insulted, 
does  not  like  to  think  an  insult  against  another.  I  do  not  like  to 
think  insults  in  a  lady's  company.  I  commit  a  crime  with  her 
which  absence  would  not  have  known.  Is  it  not  extraordinary  ? 
— when  among  men,  I  have  no  evil  thoughts,  no  malice,  no  spleen  j 
I  feel  free  to  speak  or  to  be  silent ;  I  can  listen,  and  from  every 
one  I  can  learn  ;  my  hands  are  in  my  pockets,  I  am  free  from  all 
suspicion,  and  comfortable.  When  I  am  among  women,  I  have 
evil  thoughts,  malice,  spleen  ;  I  cannot  speak,  or  be  silent ;  I  am 
full  of  suspicions,  and  therefore  listen  to  nothing  ;  I  am  in  a  hurry 
to  be  gone.  You  must  be  charitable,  and  put  all  this  perversity 
to  my  being  disappointed  since  my  boyhood.  Yet  with  such  feel- 
ings I  am  happier  alone,  among  crowds  of  men,  by  myself,  or  with 
a  friend  or  two.  With  all  this,  trust  me,  I  have  not  the  least 
idea  that  men  of  different  feelings  and  inclinations  are  more  short- 
sighted than  myself.  I  never  rejoiced  more  than  at  my  brother's 
marriage,  and  shall  do  so  at  that  of  any  of  my  friends.  I  must 
absolutely  get  over  this — but  how  ?  the  only  way  is  to  find  the 
root  of  the  evil,  and  so  cure  it,  "  with  backward  mutters  of  dis- 
severing power."  That  is  a  difficult  thing ;  for  an  obstinate 
prejudice  can  seldom  be  produced  but  from  a  gordijfn  complica- 
tion of  feelings,  which  must  take  time  to  unravel,  and  care  to 
keep  unraveled.  I  could  say  a  good  deal  about  this,  but  I  will 
leave  it,  in  hopes  of  better  and  more  worthy  dispositions — and, 
also,  content  that  I  am  wronging  no  one,  for,  after  all,  I  do  think 
better  of  womankind  than  to  suppose  they  care  whether  Mister 
John  Keats,  five  feet  high,  likes  them  or  not.  You  appeared  to 
wish  to  know  my  moods  on  this  subject ;  don't  think  it  a  bore,  my 
dear  fellow, — it  shall  be  my  Amen. 

I  should  not  have  consented  to  myself,  these  four  months, 
tramping  in  the  Higlilands,  but  that  I  thought  it  would  give  me 
more  experience,  rub  off  more  prejudice,  use  [me]  to  more  hard- 
ship, identify  finer  scenes,  load  me  with  grander  mountains,  and 
strengthen  more  my  reach  in  poetry,  than  would  stopping  at  home 
among  books,  even  though  I  should  reacli  Homer.  By  this  time 
I  am  comparatively  a  mouiitainerr  ;  I  have  been  among  wilds  and 
mountains  too  much  to  break  out  much  about  iheir  grandeur,     I 


JOHN  KEATS.  123 


have  not  fed  upon  oat-cake  long  enough  to  be  very  much  attached 
to  it.  The  first  mountains  I  saw,  though  not  so  large  as  some 
I  have  since  seen,  weighed  very  solemnly  upon  me.  The  effect 
is  wearing  away,  yet  I  like  them  mainly.  We  have  come  this 
evening  with  a  guide — for  without  was  impossible — into  the  mid- 
dle of  the  Isle  of  Mull,  pursuing  our  cheap  journey  to  lona,  and 
perhaps  Staffa.  We  would  not  follow  the  common  and  fashion- 
able mode,  for  the  great  imposition  of  expense.  We  have  come 
over  heath,  and  rock,  and  river,  and  bog,  to  what,  in  England, 
would  be  called  a  horrid  place.  Yet  it  belongs  to  a  sheplierd 
pretty  well  off.  The  family  speak  not  a  word  but  Galic,  and  we 
have  not  yet  seen  their  faces  for  the  smoke,  which,  after  visiting 
every  cranny,  (not  excepting  my  eyes,  very  much  incommoded  for 
writing,)  finds  its  way  out  at  the  door.  I  am  more  comfortable 
than  I  could  have  imagined  in  such  a  place,  and  so  is  Brown. 
The  people  are  all  very  kind.  We  lost  our  way  a  little,  yester- 
day ;  and  inquiring  at  a  cottage,  a  young  woman,  without  a  word, 
threw  on  her  cloak",  and  walked  a  mile  in  a  mizzling  rain  and 
splashy  way  to  put  us  right  again. 

I  could  not  have  had  a  greater  pleasure  in  these  parts  than 
your  mention  of  my  sister.  She  is  very  much  prisoned  for  me. 
I  am  afraid  it  will  be  some  time  before  I  can  take  her  to  many 
places  I  wish. 

I  trust  we  shall  see  you  ere  long  in  Cumberland — at  least  I 
hope  I  shall,  before  my  visit  to  America,  more  than  once.  I  in- 
tend to  pass  a  whole  year  there,  if  I  live  to  the  completion  of  the 
three  next.  My  sister's  welfare,  and  the  hopes  of  such  a  stay  in 
America,  will  make  me  observe  your  advice.  I  shall  be  pru- 
dent, and  more  careful  of  my  health  than  I  have  been. 

I  hope  you  will  be  about  paying  your  first  visit  to  town,  after 
settling  when  we  come  into  Cumberland.  Cumberland,  however, 
will  be  no  distance  to  me  after  my  present  journey.  I  shall  spin 
to  you  [in]  a  minute.  I  begin  to  get  rather  a  contempt  of  dis- 
tances. I  hope  you  will  have  a  nice  convenient  room  for  a  libra- 
ry. Now  you  are  so  well  in  health,  do  keep  it  up  by  never 
missing  your  dinner,  by  not  reading  hard,  and  by  taking  proper 
exercise.  You'll  have  a  horse,  I  suppose,  so  you  must  make  a 
point  of  sweating  him.     You  say  I  must  study  Dante  :  well,  the 


124  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

only  books  I  have  with  me  are  those  three  little  volumes.  I  read 
that  fine  passage  you  mention  a  few  days  ago.  Your  letter  fol- 
lowed me  from  Hampstead  to  Port  Patrick,  and  thence  to  Glas- 
gow.    You  must  think  me,  by  this  time,  a  very  pretty  fellow. 

One  of  the  pleasantest  bouts  we  have  had  was  our  walk  to 
Burns's  Cottage,  over  the  Doon,  and  past  Kirk  Alloway.  I  had 
determined  to  write  a  sonnet  in  the  Cottage.  I  did  ;  but  it  was  so 
wretched  I  destroyed  it :  however,  in  a  few  days  afterwards  I 
wrote  some  lines  cousin-german  to  the  circumstance,  which  I  will 
transcribe,  or  rather  cross-sci'ibe  in  the  front  of  this. 

Reynolds's  illness  has  made  him  a  new  man  ;  he  will  be 
stronger  than  ever:  before  I  left  London  he  was  really  getting  a 
fat  face. 

Brown  keeps  on  writing  volumes  of  adventures  to  Dilke. 
When  we  get  in  of  an  evening,  and  I  have  perhaps  taken  my  rest 
on  a  couple  of  chairs,  he  affronts  my  indolence  and  luxury,  by 
pulling  out  of  his  knapsack,  first,  his  paper;  secondly,  his  pens; 
and  lastly,  his  ink.  Now  I  would  not  care  if  he  would  change  a 
little.  1  say  now,  why  not,  Bailey,  take  out  his  pens  first  some- 
times. But  I  might  as  well  tell  a  hen  to  hold  up  her  head  before 
she  drinks,  instead  of  afterwards. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


There  is  a  charm  in  footing  slow  across  a  silent  plain, 

Where  patriot  battle  had  been  fought,  where  glor}'  had  the  gain  ; 

There  is  a  pleasure  on  the  heath,  where  Druids  old  have  been. 

Where  mantles  gray  have  rustled  by,  and  swept  the  nettled  green: 

There  is  a  joy  in  every  spot  made  known  in  times  of  old. 

New  to  the  feet  altho'  each  tale  a  hundred  times  be  told  ; 

There  is  a  deeper  joy  than  all,  more  solemn  in  the  heart, 

More  parching  to  the  tongue  than  all,  of  more  divine  a  smart. 

When  weary  steps  forget  themselves  upon  a  pleasant  turf, 

Upon  hot  sand,  or  flinty  road,  or  seashore  iron  surf. 

Toward  the  castle  or  the  cot,  where  long  ago  was  born 

One  who  was  great  through  mortal  days,  and  died  of  fame  unshorn. 

Light  heather-bells  may  tremble  then — but  they  are  far  away ; 
Wood-lark  may  sing  from  sandy  fern — the  Sun  may  hear  his  lay  ; 


JOriN  KEATS.  195 


Runnels  may  kiss  tlie  grass  on  shelves  and  shallows  clear, — 

But  their  low  voices  are  not  heard,  tho'  come  on  travels  drear  ; 

Blood-red  the  Sun  may  set  behind  lilack  mountain  peaks, 

Blue  tides  may  sluice  and  drench  their  lime  in  caves  and  weedy  creeks. 

Eagles  may  seem  to  sleep  wing-wide  upon  the  air, 

Ring-doves  may  fly  convulsed  across  to  some  high  cedarcd  lair, — 

But  the  forgotten  eye  is  still  fast  lidded  to  the  ground. 

As  Palmer's  that  with  weariness  mid-desert  shrine  hath  found. 

At  such  a  time  the  soul's  a  child,  in  childhood  is  the  brain. 
Forgotten  is  the  worldly  heart — alone,  it  beats  in  vain  ! 
Aye,  if  a  madman  could  have  leave  to  pass  a  healthful  day, 
To  tell  his  forehead's  swoon  and  faint,  when  first  begnn  decay, 
He  might  make  tremble  many  a  one,  whose  spirit  had  gone  forth 
To  find  a  bard's  low  cradle-place  about  the  silent  north  ! 

Scanty  the  hour,  and  few  the  steps,  beyond  the  bouine  of  care. 
Beyond  the  sweet  and  bitter  world — beyond  it  unaware  I 
Scanty  the  hour,  and  few  the  steps — because  a  longer  stay 
Would  bar  return  and  make  a  man  forget  his  mortal  way  ! 
Oh,  horrible  !  to  lose  the  sight  of  well-remembered  face. 
Of  Brother's  eyes,  of  Sisters  brow — constant  to  every  place. 
Filling  the  air  as  on  we  move  with  portraiture  intense. 
More  warm  than  those  heroic  tints  that  pain  a  painter's  sense. 
When  shapes  of  old  come  striding  by,  and  visages  of  old. 
Locks  shining  black,  hair  scanty  gray,  and  passions  manifold  ! 

No,  no — that  horror  cannot  be  I  for  at  the  cable's  length 

Man  feels  the  gentle  anchor  pull,  and  gladdens  in  its  strength  : 

One  hour,  half  idiot,  he  stands  by  mossy  waterfall. 

But  in  the  very  next  he  reads  his  soul's  memorial ; 

He  reads  it  on  the  mountain's  height,  where  chance  he  may  sit  down, 

Upon  rough  marble  diadem,  that  hill's  eternal  crown. 

Yet  be  his  anchor  e'er  so  fast,  room  is  there  for  a  prayer. 

That  man  may  never  lose  his  mind  in  mountains  black  and  bare  ; 

That  he  may  stray,  league  after  league,  some  great  birthplace  to  find. 

And  keep  his  vision  clear  from  speck,  his  inward  sight  nnblind. 


DtJ.VANCULLEN,  Juhj  237,  [1818. J 

My  Dear  T031, 

Just  after  my  la.st  had  jtohp  to  the  post,  in  came 
one  of  the  men  with  whom  we  endeavored  to  ayree  ahout  jioinir  to 
StafFa :  he  said  what  a  pity  it  was  we  should  turn  aside,  and  not 


126  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

see  the  curiosities.  So  we  had  a  little  tatlle,  and  finally  ajjreed 
that  he  should  be  our  guide  across  the  Isle  of  Mull.  We  set  out, 
crossed  two  ferries,  one  to  the  Isle  of  Kerrera,  of  little  distance  ; 
the  other  from  Kerrera  to  Mull,  nine  miles  across.  We  did  it  in 
forty  minutes,  with  a  fine  breeze.  The  road  through  the  island, 
or  rather  track,  is  the  most  dreary  you  can  think  of;  between 
dreary  ffioantains,  over  bog,  and  rock,  and  river,  with  our  breeches 
tucked  up,  and  our  stockings  in  hand.  About  eight  o'clock  we 
arrived  at  a  shepherd's  hut,  into  which  we  could  scarcely  get  for 
the  smoke,  through  a  door  lower  than  my  shoulders.  We  found 
our  way  into  a  little  compartment,  with  the  rafters  and  turf-thatch 
blackened  with  smoke,  the  earth-floor  full  of  hills  and  dales.  We 
had  some  white  bread  with  us,  made  a  good  supper,  and  slept  in 
our  clothes  in  some  blankets  ;  our  guide  snored  in  another  little 
bed  about  an  arm's  length  off.  This  morning  we  came  about  sax 
miles  to  breakfast,  by  rather  a  better  path,  and  we  are  now  in,  by 
comparison,  a  mansion.  Our  guide  is,  I  think,  a  very  obliging 
fellow.  In  the  way,  this  morning,  he  sang  us  two  Gaelic  songs — 
one  made  by  a  Mrs.  Brown,  on  her  husband's  being  drowned — 
the  other  a  Jacobin  one  on  Charles  Stuart.  For  some  days  Brown 
has  been  inquiring  out  his  genealogy  here  ;  he  thinks  his  grand- 
father came  from  Long  Island.  He  got  a  parcel  of  people  round 
him  at  a  cottage  door  last  evening,  chatted  with, one  who  had  been 
a  Miss  Brown,  and  who,  I  think,  from  a  likeness,  must  have  been 
a  relation  :  he  jawed  with  the  old  woman,  flattered  a  young  one, 
and  kissed  a  child,  who  was  afraid  of  his  spectacles,  and  finally 
drank  a  pint  of  milk.  They  handle  his  spectacles  as  we  do  a 
sensitive  leaf. 

July  26/A. — Well !  we  had  a  most  wretched  walk  of  thirty- 
seven  miles,  across  the  Island  of  Mull,  and  then  we  crossed  to 
lona,  or  Icolmkill  ;  from  Icolmkill  we  took  a  boat  at  a  bargain  to 
take  us  to  Staffli,  and  land  us  at  the  head  of  Loch  Nakeal,  whence 
we  should  only  have  to  walk  half  the  distance  to  Oban  again  and 
by  a  better  road.  All  this  is  well  passed  and  done,  with  this  sin- 
gular piece  of  luck,  that  there  was  an  interruption  in  the  bad 
weather  just  as  we  saw  StafTa,  at  which  it  is  impossible  to  land 
but  in  a  tolerably  calm  sea.  But  I  will  first  mention  Icolmkill. 
I  know   not  whether  you   have  heard   much    about  this   island  ;   I 


JOHN  KEATS.  127 


never  did  before  I  came  nifjh  it.  It  is  rich  in  the  most  interest- 
ing antiquities.  Who  would  expect  to  find  the  ruins  of  a  fine 
cathedral  church,  of  cloisters,  colleges,  monasteries,  and  nunne- 
ries, in  so  remote  an  island  ?  The  beginning  of  these  things  was 
in  the  sixth  century,  under  the  superstition  of  a  would-be-bishop- 
saint,  who  landed  from  Ireland,  and  chose  the  spot  for  its  beauty  ; 
for,  at  that  time,  the  now  treeless  place  was  covered  with  magni- 
ficent woods.  Columba  in  the  Gaelic  is  Colm,  signifying  "  dove;" 
"  kill  "  signifies  "  church  ;"  and  I  is  as  good  as  island  :  .so  I-colm- 
kill  means,  the  island  of  St.  Columba's  Church.  Now  this  St. 
Columba  became  the  Dominic  of  the  Barbarian  Christians  of  the 
North,  and  was  famed  also  far  South,  but  more  especially  was 
reverenced  by  the  Scots,  the  Picts,  the  Norwegians,  and  the 
Irish.  In  a  course  of  years,  perhaps  the  island  was  considered 
the  most  holy  ground  of  the  north  ;  and  the  old  kings  of  the  afore- 
mentioned nations  chose  it  for  their  burial-place.  We  were 
shown  a  spot  in  the  church-yard  where  they  say  sixty-one  kings 
are  buried  ;  forty-eight  Scotch,  from  Fergus  II.  to  Macbeth ; 
eight  Irish  ;  four  Norwegians ;  and  one  French.  They  lay  in 
rows  compact.  Then  we  were  shown  other  matters  of  later  date, 
but  still  very  ancient ;  many  tombs  of  Highland  chieftains — their 
effigies  in  complete  armor,  face  upward,  black,  and  moss-covered  ; 
abbots  and  bishops  of  the  island,  always  of  the  chief  clans- 
There  were  plenty  Macleans  and  Macdonalds ;  among  these  lat- 
ter the  famous  Macdonald,  Lord  of  the  Isles.  There  have  been 
three  hundred  crosses  in  the  island,  but  the  Presbyterian,  destroyed 
all  but  two,  one  of  which  is  a  very  fine  one,  and  completely  cov- 
ered with  a  shaggy,  coarse  moss.  The  old  school-master,  an 
ignorant  little  man,  but  reckoned  very  clever,  showed  us  these 
things.  He  is  a  Maclean,  and  as  much  above  four  feet  as  he  is 
under  four  feet  three  inches.  He  stops  at  one  glass  of  whisky, 
unless  you  press  another,  and  at  the  second,  unless  you  press  a 
third. 

I  am  puzzled  how  to  give  you  an  idea  of  StafFa.  It  can  only 
be  represented  by  a  first  rate  drawing.  One  may  compare  the 
surface  of  the  island  to  a  roof;  this  roof  is  supported  by  grand 
pillars  of  basalt,  standing  together  as  thick  as  honeycomb.  The 
finest  thing  is  Fingal's  Cave.     It  is  entirely  a  hollowing  out  of  ba- 


128  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

salt  pillars.  Sujjpose,  now,  the  ii'iaiits  who  rebelled  against  Jove, 
had  taken  a  whole  mass  of  black  columns  and  bound  them  to- 
gether like  bunches  of  matches,  and  then,  with  immense  axes,  had 
made  a  cavern  in  the  body  of  these  columns.  Of  course  the  roof 
and  floor  must  be  composed  of  the  ends  of  these  columns.  Such 
is  Fingal'sCave,  except  that  the  sea  has  done  the  work  of  excava- 
tion, and  is  continually  dashing  there.  So  that  we  walk  along  the 
sides  of  the  cave,  on  the  pillars  which  are  left,  as  if  for  conve- 
nient  stairs.  The  roof  is  arched  somewhat  Gothic-wise,  and  the 
length  of  some  of  the  entire  side-pillars  is  fifty  feet.  About  the 
island  you  might  seat  an  army  of  men,  each  on  a  pillar.  The 
length  of  the  cave  is  120  feet,  and  from  its  extremity,  the  view 
into  the  sea,  through  the  large  arch  at  the  entrance,  is  sublime. 
The  color  of  the  columns  is  black,  with  a  lurking  gloom  of  pur- 
ple therein.  For  solemnity  and  grandeur,  it  far  surpasses  the 
finest  cathedrals.  At  the  extremity  of  the  cave  there  is  a  small 
perforation  into  another  cave,  at  which,  the  waters  meeting  and 
buffeting  each  other,  there  is  sometimes  produced  a  report  as  if  of 
a  cannon,  heard  as  far  as  lona,  which  must  be  twelve  miles.  As 
we  approached  in  the  boat,  there  was  such  a  fine  swell  of  the  sea 
that  tlie  pillars  appeared  immediately  arising  from  the  crystal. 
But  it  is  impossible  to  describe  it. 

Not  Aladdin  magian 
Ever  such  a  work  began  ; 
Not  the  wizard  of  the  Dee 
Ever  such  a  dream  could  see  ; 
Not  St.  John,  in  Patmos'  isle, 
In  the  passion  of  his  toil. 
When  he  saw  ihe  churches  seven, 
Golden  aisled,  built  up  in  heaven. 
Gazed  at  such  a  rugged  wonder ! — 
As  I  stood  its  roofing  under, 
Lo!   I  saw  one  sleeping  there, 
On  the  marble  cold  and  bare  ; 
While  the  surges  washed  his  feet, 
And  his  garments  white  did  beat. 
Drenched  about  the  sombre  rocks  ; 
On  his  neck  his  well-grown  locks. 
Lifted  dry  above  the  main, 
Were  upon  the  curl  again. 


JOHN  KEATS.  129 


"  What  is  tliis  ?  and  what  art  ihou  ?" 
Whispered  I,  and  touch'd  iiis  brow  ; 
"  What  art  thou  ?  'and  what  is  this  ?" 
Whispered  I,  and  strove  to  kiss 
The  spirit's  iiand,  to  wake  his  eyes  ; 
Up  he  started  in  a  trice  : 
"  I  am  Lycidas,"  said  he, 
"  Fam'd  in  fun'ral  minstrelsy  ! 
This  was  architectur'd  thus 
By  the  great  Oceanus ! — 
Here  his  mighty  waters  play 
Hollow  organs  all  the  day  ; 
Here,  by  turns,  his  dolphins  all. 
Finny  palmers,  great  and  small. 
Come  to  pay  devotion  due, — 
Each  a  mouth  of  pearls  must  strew  ! 
Many  a  mortal  of  these  days, 
•  Dares  to  pass  our  sacred  ways ; 

Dares  to  touch,  audaciously. 
This  cathedral  of  the  sea  ! 
I  have  been  the  pontiff-priest. 
Where  the  waters  never  rest. 
Where  a  fledgy  sea-bird  choir 
Soars  for  ever  !     Holy  fire 
I  have  hid  from  mortal  man  ; 
Proteus  is  my  Sacristan  ! 
But  the  dulled  eye  of  mortal 
Hath  passed  beyond  the  rocky  portal  ; 
So  for  ever  will  I  leave 
Such  a  taint,  and  soon  unweave 
All  the  magic  of  the  place." 
So  saying,  with  a  Spirit's  glance 
He  dived  ! 

I  ain  sony  I  am  so  indolent  as  to  write  such  stuff  as  this.  It 
can't  be  helped. 

The  western  coast  of  Scotland  is  a  most  strange  place  ;  it  is 
composed  of  rocks,  mountains,  mountainous  and  rocky  islands, 
intersected  by  lochs  ;  you  can  go  but  a  short  distance  any  where 
from  salt-water  in  the  Highlands. 

I  assure  you  I  often  long  for  a  seat  and  a  cup  o'  tea  at  Well 
Walk,  especially  now  that  the  mountains,  castles,  and  lakes  are 
becoming  common  to  me.     Yet  I  would  rather  summer  it  out,  for 


130  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

on  the  whole  I  am  happier  than  when  I  have  time  to  be  glum  : 
perhaps  it  may  cure  me.  Immediately  on  my  return  I  shall  be- 
gin studying  hard,  with  a  peep  at  the  theatre  now  and  then.  I 
have  a  slight  sore  throat,  and  think  it  better  to  stay  a  day  or  two 
at  Oban  :  then  we  shall  proceed  to  Fort  William  and  Inverness. 
Brown,  in  his  letters,  puts  down  every  little  circumstance ;  I 
should  like  to  do  the  same,  but  I  confess  myself  too  indolent,  and 
besides,  next  winter  they  will  come  up  in  prime  order  as  we  speak 
of  such  and  such  things. 

Remember  me  to  all,  including  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bentley. 

Your  most  affectionate  brother, 

John. 

From  Fort  William  Keats  mounted  Ben  Nevis.  When  on  the 
summit  a  cloud  enveloped  him,  and  sitting  on  the  stones,  as  it 
slowly  wafted  away,  showing  a  tremendous  precipice  into  the 
valley  below,  he  wrote  these  lines : — 

Read  me  a  lesson.  Muse,  and  speak  it  loud 
Upon  the  top  of  Nevis,  blind  in  mist ! 
I  look  into  the  chasms,  and  a  shroud 
Vaporous  doth  hide  them, — just  so  much  I  wist 
Mankind  do  know  of  hell  ;  I  look  o'erhead, 
And  there  is  sullen  mist, — even  so  much 
Mankind  can  tell  of  heaven  ;  mist  is  spread 
Before  the  earth,  beneath  me, — even  such. 
Even  so  vague  is  man's  sight  of  hiniself ! 
Here  are  the  craggy  stones  beneath  my  feet, — 
Thus  much  I  know  that,  a  poor  witless  elf, 
I  tread  on  them, —  that  all  my  eye  doth  meet 
Is  mist  and  crag,  not  only  on  this  height, 
But  in  the  world  of  thought  and  mental  might ! 


To  Mrs.  Wylie,  the  mother  of  his  sister-in-law. 

Inverness,  August  6,  [1818.] 
My  Dear  Madam, 

It  was  a  great  regret  to  mc  that  I  should  leave  all  my 
friends,  just  at  the  moment  when  I  might  have  helped  to  soften 
away  the  time  for  them.     I  wanted  not  to  leave  my  brother  Tom, 


JOHN  KEATS.  131 


but  more  especially,  believe  me,  I  should  like  to  have  remained 
near  you,  were  it  but  for  an  atom  of  consolation  after  parting  with 
so  dear  a  daughter.  My  brother  George  has  ever  been  more  than 
a  brother  to  me  ;  he  has  been  my  greatest  friend,  and  I  can  never 
forget  the  sacrifice  you  have  made  for  his  happiness.  As  I  walk 
along  the  mountains  here  I  am  full  of  these  things,  and  lay  in 
wait,  as  it  were,  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  immediately  on  my 
return  to  town.  1  wish,  above  all  things,  to  say  a  word  of  comfort 
to  you,  but  I  know  not  how.  It  is  impossible  to  prove  that  black 
is  white  ;  it  is  impossible  to  make  out  that  sorrow  is  joy,  or  joy 
is  sorrow. 

Tom  tells  me  that  you  called  on  Mrs.  Haslam,  with  a  news- 
paper giving  an  account  of  a  gentleman  in  a  fur  cap,  falling  over 
a-  precipice  in  Kircudbrightshire.  If  it  was  me,  I  did  it  in  a 
dream,  or  in  some  magic  interval  between  the  first  and  second  cup 
of  tea;  which  is  nothing  extraordinary  when  we  hear  that  Ma- 
homet, in  getting  out  of  bed,  upset  a  jug  of  water,  and  whilst  it 
was  falling,  took  a  fortnight's  trip,  as  it  seemed,  to  Heaven  ;  yet 
was  back  in  time  to  save  one  drop  of  water  being  spilt.  As  for 
fur  caps,  I  do  not  remember  one  beside  my  own,  except  at  Car- 
lisle :  this  was  a  very  good  fur  cap  I  met  in  High-street,  and  I 
dare  say  was  the  unfortunate  one.  I  dare  say  that  the  Fates,  see- 
ing but  two  fur  caps  in  the  north,  thought  it  too  extraordinary,  and 
so  threw  the  dies  which  of  them  should  be  drowned.  The  lot 
fell  upon  Jones :  I  dare  say  his  name  was  Jones.  All  I  hope  is 
that  the  gaunt  ladies  said  not  a  word  about  hanging  ;  if  they  did 
I  shall  repeat  that  I  was  not  half-drowned  in  Kircudbright.  Stop  ! 
let  me  see ! — being  half-drowned  by  falling  from  a  precipice,  is  a 
very  romantic  affair:  why  should  I  not  take  it  to  myself?  How 
glorious  to  be  introduced  in  a  drawing-room  to  a  lady  who  reads 
novels,  with  "  Mr.  So-and-so — Miss  So-and-so  ;  Miss  So-and-so, 
this  is  Mr.  So-and-so,  who  fell  off"  a  precipice  and  was  half- 
drowned."  Now  I  refer  to  you,  whether  I  should  lose  so  fine  an 
opportunity  of  making  my  fortune.  No  romance  lady  could  re- 
sist me — none.  Being  run  under  a  wagon  ;  side-lamed  in  a  play- 
house ;  apoplectic  thi^ough  brandy  ;  and  a  thousand  other  tolerably 
decent  things  for  badness,  would  be  nothing  ;  but  being  tumbled 
over  a  precipice  into  the  sea — oh  !  it  woirld  make  my   fortune — 


132  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

especially  if  you  could  continue  to  hint,  from  this  bulletin's  au- 
thority, that  I  was  not  upset  on  my  own  account,  but  that  I  clashed 
into  the  waves  after  Jessy  of  Dumblane,  and  pulled  her  out  by 
the  hair  ; — but  that,  alas  !  she  was  dead,  or  she  would  have  made 
me  happy  with  her  hand.  However,  in  this  you  may  use  your 
own  discretion.  But  I  must  leave  joking,  and  seriously  aver,  that 
I  have  been  very  romantic  indeed  among  these  mountains  and 
lakes.  I  have  got  wet  through,  day  after  day  ;  eaten  oat-cake, 
and  drank  whisky  ;  walked  up  to  my  knees  in  bog  ;  got  a  sore 
throat ;  gone  to  see  Icolmkill  and  Stafta  ;  met  with  unwholesome 
food,  just  here  and  there,  as  it  happened  ;  went  up  Ben  Nevis, 
and — N.  B.,  came  down  again  :  sometimes,  when  I  am  rather 
tired,  I  lean  rather  languishingly  on  a  rock,  and  long  for  some  fa- 
mous beauty  to  get  down  from  her  palfrey  in  passing,  approach 
me,  with — her  saddle-bags,  and  give  me — a  dozen  or  two  capital 
roast-beef  sandwiches. 

When  I  come  into  a  large  town,  you  know  there  is  no  putting 
one's  knapsack  into  one's  fob,  so  the  people  stare.  We  have  been 
taken  for  spectacle-venders,  razor-sellers,  jewelers,  traveling  lin- 
en-drapers, spies,  excisemen,  and  many  things  I  have  no  idea  of. 
"When  1  asked  for  letters  at  Port  Patrick,  the  man  asked, — What 
regiment?  I  have  had  a  peep  also  at  Little  Ireland.  Tell  Hen- 
ry I  have  not  camped  quite  on  tlic  bare  earth,  yet,  but  nearly  as 
bad,  in  walking  through  Mull  ;  for  the  sheplierds'  huts  you  can 
scarcely  breathe  in  for  the  smoke,  which  they  seem  to  endeavor 
to  preserve  for  smoking  on  a  large  scale. 

I  assure  you,  my  dear  Madam,  that  one  of  the  greatest  plea- 
sures I  shall  have  on  my  return,  will  be  seeing  you,  and  that  I 
shall  ever  be 

Yours,  with  the  greatest  respect  and  sincerity, 

John  Keats. 

It  was  Keats's  intention  to  return  by  Edinburgh  ;  but,  on  ar- 
riving at  Inverness,  the  inflammation  in  his  throat,  brought  on  by 
the  accidents  and  inconvenience  of  travel,  caused  him,  at  his 
friend's  solicitation,  to  return  at  once  to  London.  Sonie  nmtual 
friend  had  forwarded  him  an  invitation  from  Messrs.  Blackwood, 
injudiciously  adding  the  suggestion,  that  it  would  be  very  advisa- 


JOHN  KEATS.  133 


ble  lor  him  to  visit  tlie  Modern  Athens,  and  endeavor  to  concili- 
ate his  literary  enemies  in  that  quarter.  The  sensibility  and 
moral  dignity  of  Keats  were  outraged  by  this  proposal :  it  may  be 
imagined  what  answer  he  returned,  and  also  that  this  circum- 
stance may  not  have  been  unconnected  with  the  article  on  him 
which  appeared  in  the  August  number  of  the  "  Edinburgh  Maga- 
zine," as  part  of  a  series  that  had  commenced  the  previous  year, 
and  concerning  which  he  had  already  expressed  himself  freely. 

Outside  sheet  of  a  letter  to  Mr.  Bailey. 
"  There  has  been  a  flaming  attack  upon  Hunt  in  the  '  Edin- 
burgh Magazine.'  I  never  read  any  thing  so  virulent — accusing 
him  of  the  greatest  crimes,  depreciating  his  wife,  his  poetry,  his 
habits,  his  company,  his  conversation.  These  philippics  are  to 
come  ont  in  numbers — called,  '  The  Cockney  School  of  Poetry.' 
There  has  been  but  one  number  published — that  on  Hunt — to  which 
they  have  prefixed  a  motto  from  one  Cornelius  Webb,  '  Poetas- 
ter'— who,  unfortunately,  was  of  our  party  occasionally  at  Hamp- 
stead,  and  took  it  into  his  head  to  write  the  following:  something 
about,  '  We'll  talk  on  Wordsworth,  Byron,  a  theme  we  never  tire 
on  ;'  and  so  forth  till  he  comes  to  Hunt  and  Keats.  In  the  motto 
they  have  put  Hunt  and  Keats  in  large  letters.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  the  second  number  was  intended  for  me  but  have  hopes  of  its 
non-appearance,  from  the  following  advertisement  in  last  Sunday's 
Examiner  — '  To  Z.  —  The  writer  of  the  article  signed  Z,  in  Black- 
wood's Edinburgh  Magazine,  for  October,  1817,  is  invited  to  send 
his  address  to  the  printer  of  the  Examiner,  in  order  that  justice  may 
be  executed  on  the  proper  person.'  I  don't  mind  the  thing  much 
— but  if  he  should  go  to  such  lengths  with  me  as  he  has  done  with 
Hunt,  I  must  infallibly  call  him  to  account,  if  he  be  a  human  be- 
ing, and  appears  in  squares  and  theatres,  where  we  might  '  possi- 
bly meet.'  " 


Keats's  first  volume  had  been  inscribed  to  Leigh  Hunt,  and 
contained  an  ardent  and  affectionate  Sonnet,  written  "on  the  day 
when  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  left  prison."     It  was  therefore  at  once  as- 

7 


134  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

sumed  by  the  critics  that  Keats  was  not  only  -a  bad  poet,  but  a 
bad  citizen.  At  ihis  lime  literary  criticism  had  assumed  an  un- 
usually political  complexion.  The  triumph  of  the  advocates  of 
establislied  rights  and  enforced  order,  over  all  the  iiopes  and 
dreams  that  the  French  Revolution  had  generated,  was  complete, 
and  it  was  accompanied  with  the  insolence  of  men  whose  cause 
had  little  in  it  to  move  the  higher  impulses  of  our  nature.  Proud 
of  the  ovei'throw  of  that  fatal  ambition,  which  had  turned  into  the 
gall  of  selfishness  all  the  wholesome  sympathy  of  a  liberated  na- 
tion for  the  wrongs  of  others,  and  rejoicing  in  the  pacification  of 
Europe,  they  cared  little  for  the  preservation  of  national  liberties 
from  arbitrary  power,  or  for  the  extirpation  of  those  abuses  and 
that  injustice,  which  had  first  provoked  the  contest  and  would 
surely  lead  to  its  renewal,  if  tolerated  or  sustained.  It  was,  per- 
haps, too  much  to  expect  a  recognition  of  what  the  French  Revo- 
lution had  done  for  the  mind  of  man,  from  those  who  had  spent 
their  blood  and  treasure  in  resisting  its  immediate  consequences, 
and  some  intolerance  was  to  be  forgiven  in  those  who,  when  con- 
jured in  the  name  of  Liberty,  could  point  to  the  system  of  Napo- 
leon, or  in  that  of  Humanity,  to  the  "  Reign  of  Terror."  The 
pious  Wordsworth  and  the  politic  Southey,  who  had  hailed  the 
day-star  with  songs  of  triumph,  had  fled  afFrighted  from  its  bloody 
noon,  and  few  persons  of  generous  temper  and  honest  purpose  re- 
mained, whose  imagination  had  not  been  tamed  down  before  the 
terrible  realities,  or  whose  moral  sense  had  not  been  shocked  into 
despair. 

Among  these,  however,  were  the  men  of  letters,  who  were 
designated,  in  ridicule,  "  The  Cockney  School."  The  epithet 
had  so  much  meaning  as  consisted  in  some  of  the  leaders  being 
Londoners,  and  engaged  in  the  editorship  of  the  public  press  of 
the  metropolis.  The  strong  and  immediate  contrasts  between 
town  and  country,  seemed  also  to  have  the  effect  of  rendering 
many  of  these  writers  insensible  to  that  discrimination  of  the  rela- 
tive worth  and  importance  of  natural  objects,  which  habit  and 
taste  requires,  but  which  reason  cannot  strictly  define.  It  is  per- 
fectly true  that  a  blade  of  grass  is,  to  the  reverential  observer,  as 
great  a  miracle  of  divine  workmanship  as  the  solar  system — that 
the  valves  of  an  unseemly  shell  may  have,  to  the  physiologist,  all 


JOHN  KEATS.  135 


the  importance  of  the  circumfluent  ocean — and  that  the  Poet  may 
well  find  in  a  daisy,  "thoughts  too  deep  for  tears" — but  there 
ever  will  be  gradations  of  interest  in  the  susceptibilities  even  of 
educated  and  accomplished  men,  and  the  admiration  which  would 
be  recognized  as  just  when  applied  to  a  rare  or  expensive  object, 
will  always  appear  unreal  and  coxcombical  when  lavished  on 
what  is  trivial  and  common.  Nor  could  these  writers,  as  a  School, 
be  held  altogether  guiltless  of  the  charge  of  literary  conceit.  The 
scantiness  of  general  sympathy  drove  them  into  a  coterie ;  and 
the  evils  inseparable  from  a  limited  intercourse  with  other  minds 
grew  up  and  flourished  abundantly  amongst  them.  They  drew 
their  inspiration  from  books  and  from  themselves,  and  became,  in 
many  cases  unconsciously,  imitators  of  the  peculiarities,  as  well 
as  of  the  beauties,  of  the  elder  models  of  language  and  style.  It 
was  not  so  much  that  they  were  guilty  of  affected  archaisms,  as 
that  they  delighted  in  giving  that  prominence  to  individual  pecu- 
liarities, great  and  small,  which  impart  to  the  works  of  some  early 
poets  an  antiquarian  as  well  as  literary  interest,  but  which  had 
an  almost  comic  effect  when  transferred  to  the  habits  and  circum- 
stances of  a  particular  set  of  men  in  our  own  times.  They  fell 
into  the  error  of  demanding  public  and  permanent  attention  for 
matters  that  could  only  claim  a  private  and  occasional  interest, 
and  thus  have  they  not  only  damaged  their  contemporary  reputa- 
tion, but  have  barred  up,  in  a  great  degree,  their  access  to  future 
fame. 

Literary  history  affords  us  a  singular  parallel  to  the  fate  of 
this  school,  in  that  of  the  Italian-French  poets  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  of  whom  Marino  was  the  founder,  and  Boileau  the  de- 
stroyer. Allowing  for  the  discrepancies  of  times  and  nations — 
the  rich  and  indiscriminate  diction,  the  copious  and  minute  exer- 
cise of  fancy,  the  constant  disproportion  between  the  matter  and 
the  form,  which  caused  the  author  of  the  "  Adonis"  to  be  crowned 
at  Naples,  adored  at  Paris,  and  forgotten  by  posterity,  were  here 
revived,  with  indeed  less  momentary  popularity,  but,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  with  a  better  chance  of  being  remembered  for  what  is 
really  excellent  and  beautiful  in  their  works.  The  spirit  of  Saint 
Amant,  unequal  in  its  concej)tions,  but  admirable  in  its  execution, 
might   have  lived   again   at  Hampstead.  with  all  its  ostentatious 


136  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

contempt  of  superficiul  morality,  but  with  its  real  profligacy  con- 
verted  into  a  jaunty  freedom  and  sentimental  good-nature.  There 
too  the  spirit  of  Theophile  de  Viau  might  have  audaciously  con- 
fronted what  appeared  to  him  as  the  superstition  of  his  time,  and 
when  vilified  as  "  Roi  des  Libertins "  by  brutal  and  ignorant 
men,  in  comparison  with  whom  his  life  was  singularly  pure,  he 
might  have  been  hunted  thence  as  a  felon  over  the  face  of  Europe 
in  the  name  of  loyalty  and  religion.  But  while,  in  France,  an 
ungenial  and  delusive  criticism  held  up  those  remarkable  authors 
to  public  ridicule  and  obloquy,  at  least  the  victims  of  Boileau 
recognized  some  power  and  faculty  in  the  hand  that  struck  them, 
whereas  the  reviewers  of  "  Blackwood  "  and  the  "  Quarterly  " 
were  persons  evidently  destitute  of  all  poetic  perception,  directing 
an  unrefined  and  unscrupulous  satire  against  political  opponents, 
whose  intellectual  merits  they  had  no  means  of  understanding. 
This,  indeed,  was  no  combat  of  literary  principles,  no  struggle  of 
thoughts,  no  competition  of  modes  of  expression,  it  was  simply  the 
judgment  of  the  policeman  and  the  beadle  over  mental  efforts  and 
spiritual  emanations. 

The  article  which  appeared  in  the  "  Quarterly"  was  dull  as 
well  as  ungenerous.  It  had  no  worth  as  criticism,  for  the  critic 
(as  indeed  the  man)  must  be  tested  by  what  he  admires  and  loves, 
not  only  by  what  he  dislikes  and  abuses;  and  it  was  eminently 
stupid,  for  although  the  best  burlesque  is  often  but  the  reverse  of 
the  most  valuable  work  of  art,  and  the  richest  harvest  of  humor 
is  among  the  high  and  goodly  growths  of  human  intelligence,  this 
book,  as  far  as  the  reviewer  was  capable  of  understanding  it, 
might  just  as  well  have  been  one  of  those  merely  exti'avagant  and 
ridiculous  productions  which  it  is  sheer  waste  of  time  to  notice  in 
any  way.  The  only  impression  the  review  would  have  left  on 
the  mind  of  a  judicious  reader,  would  have  been  that  the  writer 
knew  nothing  to  enable  him  to  discuss  the  subject  of  poetry  in  any 
way,  and  his  avowal  that  he  had  not  read,  or  could  not  read,  the 
work  he  undertook  to  criticise,  was  a  vulgar  impertinence  which 
should  have  prevented  any  one  from  reading  his  criticism.  The 
notice  in  "Blackwood"  was  still  more  scurrilous,  but  more  amu- 
sing, and  inserted  quotations  of  some  length,  which  no  doubt  led 
the  minds  of  many  readers  to  very  difierent  conclusions  from 


JOHN  KEATS.  137 


those  of  the  writer.  The  circumstance  of  Keats  having  been 
•  brought  up  a  surgeon,  is  tiie  staple  of  the  jokes  of  the  piece — he 
is  told,  "  it  is  a  better  and  a  wiser  thing  to  be  a  stai'ved  apothe- 
cary, than  a  starved  poet,"  and  is  bidden  "  back  to  his  gallipots ;'' 
just  as  an  orthodox  Jew  might  have  bidden  Simon  Peter  back  to 
his  nets.  At  any  rate,  this  was  hardly  the  way  to  teach  refine- 
ment to  low-born  poets,  and  to  show  the  superior  breeding  of  aris- 
tocratic reviewers. 

On  looking  back  at  the  reception  of  Keats  by  his  literary  con- 
temporaries, the  somewhat  tardy  appearance  of  the  justification  of 
his  genius  by  one  who  then  held  a  wide  sway  over  the  taste  of  his 
time,  appears  as  a  most  unfortunate  incident.  If  the  frank  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  respect  with  which  Keats  had  inspired  Mr. 
Jeffrey,  had  been  made  in  1818  instead  of  1820,  the  tide  of  public 
opinion  would  probably  have  been  at  once  turned  in  his  favor.* 
and  the  imbecile  abuse  of  his  political,  rather  than  literary,  an- 
tagonists, been  completely  exposed.  In  the  very  first  sentence 
of  his  essay,  indeed,  Mr.  Jeffrey  lamented  that  these  works  had 
not  come  under  his  notice  earlier,  and,  in  the  late  edition  of  his 
collected  articles,  he  expresses  "  the  additional  regret  that  he  did 
not  even  then  go  more  largely  into  the  exposition  of  the  merits  of 
one,  whom  he  ever  regards  as  a  poet  of  great  power  and  promise, 
lost  to  us  by  a  premature  death."  This  notice  in  the  "  Edinburgh 
Review"  referred  principally  to  "  Endymion,"  of  which,  after  a 
fair  statement  of  objections  to  certain  exaggerations  and  imperfec- 
tions, it  summed  up  the  character  and  value  as  follows ;  and  I 
think  it  nearly  impossible  to  express,  in  fewer  or  better  words,  the 
impression  usually  left  by  this  poem  on  those  minds  which,  from 
their  constitution,  can  claim  to  possess  an  opinion  on  th©  question. 
"  It  [Endymion]  is,  in  truth,  at  least  as  full  of  genius  as  of 
absurdity,  and  he  who  does  not  find  a  great  deal  in  it  to  admire 
and  to  give  delight,  cannot,  in  his  heart,  see  much  beauty  in  the 
two  exquisite  dramas  to  which  we  have  already  alluded  [the 
'  Faithful  Shepherdess'  of  Fletcher,  and  the  *  Sad  Shepherd'  of 
Ben  Jonson,]  or  find  any  great  pleasure  in  some  of  the  finest  cre- 
ations of  Milton  and  Shakspeare.  There  are  very  many  such 
persons  we  readily  believe,  even  among  the  reading  and  judicious 
'  part  of  the  community — correct  scholars  we  have  no  doubt  many 


138  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

of  them,  and,  it  may  be,  very  classical  composers  in  prose  and  in 
verse,  but  utterly  ignorant  of  the  true  genius  of  English  poetry, 
and  incapable  of  estimating  its  appropriate  and  most  exquisite 
beauties.  With  that  spirit  we  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  Mr. 
Keats  is  deeply  imbued,  and  of  those  beauties  he  has  presented 
us  with  many  sterling  examples.  We  are  very  much  inclined, 
indeed,  to  add,  that  we  do  not  know  any  book  which  we  would 
sooner  employ,  as  a  test  to  ascertain  whether  any  one  had  in  him 
a  native  relish  for  poetry,  and  a  genuine  sensibility  to  its  intrinsic 
charm." 

This  peculiar  treatment  of  the  Greek  mythology,  which  was 
merely  repulsive  to  the  unscholarly  views  of  pedants,  and  quite 
unintelligible  to  those  who,  knowing  no  more  than  Keats  himself 
did  of  the  Grecian  language,  were  utterly  incapable  of  compre- 
hending the  faculty  by  which  the  Poet  could  communicate  with 
Grecian  nature,  is  estimated  by  Mr.  Jeffrey,  with  remarkable  jus- 
tice and  force ;  but,  perhaps,  without  a  full  conception  of  the  pro- 
cess by  which  the  will  of  Keats  came  into  such  entire  harmony 
with  the  sensuous  workings  of  the  old  Grecian  spirit,  that  not 
only  did  his  imagination  delight  in  the  same  objects,  but  that  it 
was,  in  truth,  what  theirs  under  certain  circumstances  might  have 
been.     He  writes, 

"  There  is  something  very  curious  in  the  way  in  which  Mr. 
Keats,  and  Mr.  Barry  Cornwall  also,  have  dealt  with  the  pagan 
mythology,  of  which  tliey  have  made  so  much  use  in  their  poetry. 
Instead  of  presenting  its  imaginary  persons  under  the  trite  and 
vulgar  traits  that  belong  to  them  in  the  ordinary  systems,  little 
more  is  borrowed  from  these  than  the  general  conception  of  their 
conditionff  and  relations,  and  an  original  character  and  distinct  in- 
dividuality is  bestowed  upon  them,  which  has  all  the  merit  of  in- 
vention and  all  the  grace  and  attraction  of  the  fictions  on  which 
it  is  engrafted.  The  ancients,  though  they  probably  did  not  stand 
in  any  great  awe  of  their  deities,  have  yet  abstained,  very  much, 
from  any  minute  or  dramatic  representation  of  their  feelings  and 
affections.  In  Hesiod  and  Homer  they  are  coarsely  delineated, 
by  some  of  their  actions  and  adventures,  and  introduced  to  us 
merely  as  the  agents  in  those  particular  transactions,  while  in  the 
Hymns,  from  those  ascribed  to  Orpheus  and  Homer  down  to  those 


JOHN  KEATS.  139 


of  Callimachus,  we  have  little  but  pompous  epithets  and  invoca- 
tions, witii  a  flattering  commemoration  of  their  most  famous  ex- 
ploits, and  are  never  allowed  to  enter  into  their  bosoms,  or  follow 
out  the  train  of  their  feelings  with  the  presumption  of  our  human 
sympathy.  Except  the  love-song  of  the  Cyclops  to  his  sea-nymph 
in  Theocritus — the  Lamentation  of  Venus  for  Adonis  in  Moschus, 
— and  the  more  recent  Legend  of  Apuleius,  we  scarcely  recollect 
a  passage  in  all  the  writings  of  antiquity  in  which  the  passions  of 
an  Immortal  are  fairly  disclosed  to  the  scrutiny  and  observation 
of  men.  The  author  before  us,  however,  and  some  of  his  con- 
temporaries, have  dealt  differently  with  the  subject,  and  sheltering 
the  violence  of  the  fiction  under  the  ancient  traditionary  fable, 
have  created  and  imagined  an  entire  new  set  of  characters,  and 
brought  closely  and  minutely  before  us  the  loves  and  sorrows, 
and  perplexities  of  beings,  with  whose  names  and  supernatural 
attributes  we  had  long  been  familiar,  without  any  sense  or  feeling 
of  their  personal  character." 

It  appears  from  the  '•'  Life  of  Lord  Byron  "  that  he  was  ex- 
cited by  this  article  into  a  rage  of  jealous  injustice.  The  recog- 
nition, by  so  high  an  authority,  of  Keats  as  a  Poet,  already  great 
and  becoming  greater,  was  more  than  his  patience  could  endure  : 
for  though  he  had  been  very  well  content  to  receive  the  hearty 
and  honest  admiration  of  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  and  his  friends,  and  to 
hold  out  a  pretended  liberal  sympathy  with  their  views  and  ob- 
jects, yet  when  they  came  to  see  one  another  closer,  as  they  did 
in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  the  mutual  repugnance  could  no 
longer  be  concealed,  and  flamed  up  almost  into  hatred.  The 
noble  poet  wrote  to  the  editor  of  the  rival  review,  to  send  him — 
"  no  more  Keats,  I  entreat :  flay  him  alive — if  some  of  you  don't, 
I  must  skin  him  myself.  There  is  no  bearing  the  driveling 
idiotism  of  the  manikin."  Again  he  writes,  "  Of  the  praises  ol 
that  little  *  *  *  Keats — I  shall  observe,  as  Johnson  did  wher 
Sheridan  the  actor  got  a  pension — '  What !  has  he  got  a  pension  ? 
— Then  it  is  time  I  should  give  up  mine !'  Nobody  could  b( 
prouder  of  the  praise  of  the  '  Edinburgh  '  than  I  was,  or  mort 
alive  to  their  censures,  as  I  showed  in  '  English  Bards  and  Scotcl 
Reviewers.'  At  present  all  the  men  they  have  ever  praised  arc 
degraded   by  that  insane  article.     Why  do  n't  they  review  and 


140  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


praise  'Solomon's  Guide  to  Health  ?'  it   is  better  sense,  and  as 
much  poetry  as  Johnny  Keats." 

After  this  unmeasured  language,  one  is  surprised  to  find  Lord 
Byron  not  only  one  of  the  sharpest  reprovers  of  the  critics  upon 
Keats,  but  emphatic  in  the  acknowledgment  of  his  genius.  In  a 
long  note  (Nov.  1821),  he  attributes  his  indignation  to  Keats's 
depreciation  of  Pope,  which,  he  says,  "  hardly  permitted  me  to 
do  justice  to  his  own  genius  which,  malgr^  all  the  fantastic  fop- 
peries of  his  style,  was  undoubtedly  of  great  promise.  His  frag- 
ment of  '  Hyperion  '  seems  actually  inspired  by  the  Titians,  and  is 
as  sublime  as  Mschylus.  He  is  a  loss  to  our  literature,  and  the 
more  so,  as  he  himself,  before  his  death,  is  said  to  have  been  per- 
suaded that  he  had  not  taken  the  right  line,  and  was  reforming 
his  style  upon  the  more  classical  models  of  the  language."  To 
Mr.  Murray  himself,  a  short  time  before,  Byron  had  written, 
"  You  know  very  well  that  I  did  not  approve  of  Keats's  poetry, 
or  principles  of  poetry,  or  of  his  abuse  of  Pope  ;  but,  as  he  is 
dead,  omit  all  that  is  said  about  him,  in  any  MSS.  of  mine  or 
publication.  His  '  Hyperion'  is  a  fine  monument,  and  will  keep 
his  name."  This  injunction,  however,  has  been  so  little  attended 
to  by  those  who  should  have  respected  it,  that  the  later  editions 
of  Lord  Byron's  works  contain  all  the  ribald  abuse  I  have  quoted, 
although  the  exclusion  would,  in  literal  terms,  even  extend  to  the 
well-known  flippant  and  false,  but  not  ill-natured,  stanza  of  the 
11th  canto  of"  Don  Juan." 

"  John  Keats,  who  was  klU'd  off  by  one  critique, 
Just  as  he  really  promised  something  great, 

Tf  not  intelligible,  without  Grei'k 

Contrived  to  talk  about  the  gods  of  late, 

Much  as  they  might  have  been  supposed  to  speak. 
Poor  fellow  !      Plis  was  an  untoward  fate  ; 

'T  is  strange  the  mind,  that  very  fiery  particle, 

Should  let  itself  be  snuff'd  out  by  an  article." 

The  excuse  offered  by  Byron  for  all  this  inconsistency  is  by 
no  means  satisfactory,  and  this  sort  of  repentant  praise  may  be 
attributed  to  a  mixed  feeling  of  conscious  injustice,  and  to  a  cer- 
tain gratification  at  the  notion  that  Keats  had  fallen  victim  to  a 


JOHN  KEATS.  141 


kind  of  attack  whicli  his  own  superior  vigor  and  stoutsr  fibre  had 
enabled  him  triumphantly  to  resist.  In  a  letter  to  Murray  (1821) 
Byron  writes,  "  I  knew,  by  experience,  that  a  savage  review  is 
hemlock  to  a  sucking  author  :  and  the  one  on  me  (which  pro- 
duced the  '  English  Bards,'  &c.)  knocked  me  down — but  1  got 
up  again.  Instead  of  breaking  a  blood-vessel  I  drank  three  bot- 
tles of  claret,  and  began  an  answer,  finding  that  lliere  was  nothing 
in  the  article  for  which  I  could,  lawfully,  knock  JelTrey  on  the 
head,  in  an  honorable  way.  However,  I  would  not  be  the  person 
who  wrote  that  homicidal  article,  for  all  the  honor  and  glory  in 
the  world  ;  though  I  by  no  means  approve  of  that  school  of  scrib- 
bling which  it  treats  upon."  Keats,  as  has  been  shown,  was  very 
far  from  requiring  three  bottles  of  claret  to  give  him  the  inclina- 
tion to  fight  the  author  of  the  slander,  if  he  could  have  found  him, 
— but  the  use  he  made  of  the  attack  was,  to  purify  his  style,  cor- 
rect his  tendency  to  exaggeration,  enlarge  his  poetical  studies, 
and  produce,  among  other  improved  efforts,  that  very  "  Hyperion  " 
which  called  forth  from  Byron  a  eulogy  as  violent  and  unqualified 
as  the  former  onslaught. 

"  Review  people,"  again  wrote  Lord  Byron,  "  have  no  more 
right  to  kill  than  any  other  footpads.  However,  he  who  would 
die  of  an  article  in  a  review  would  have  died  of  something  else 
equally  trivial.  The  same  nearly  happened  to  Kirke  White,  who 
died  afterwards  of  a  consumption."  Now  the  cases  of  Keats  and 
Kirke  White  are  just  so  far  parallel,  that  Keats  did  die  shortly 
after  the  criticisms  upon  him,  and  also  of  consumption  :  his  friends 
also,  v.hile  he  still  lived,  spent  a  great  deal  of  useless  care  upon 
these  critics,  and,  out  of  an  honest  anger,  gave  encouragement  to 
the  notion  that  their  brutality  had  a  most  injurious  effect  on  the 
spirit  and  health  of  the  Poet;  but  a  conscientious  inquiry  entirely 
dispels  such  a  supposition.  In  all  this  correspondence  it  must  be 
seen  how  little  importance  Keats  attaches  to  such  opinions,  how 
rarely  he  alludes  to  them  at  all,  and  how  easily,  when  he  does  so ; 
how  lowly  was  his  own  estimate  of  the  very  works  they  professed 
to  judge,  in  comparison  with  what  he  felt  himself  capable  of  pro- 
ducing, and  b.ow  completely  he,  in  his  world  of  art,  rested  above 
such  paltry  assailants.  After  his  early  death,  the  accusation  was 
revived  by  the  affectionate  indignation  of  Mr.  Brown  ;  and  Shel- 


142  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ley,  being  in  Italy,  readily  adopted  the  same  tone.  On  the  publi- 
cation of  the  volume  containing  "Lamia,"  "Isabella,"  "St.  Ag- 
nes' Eve,"  and  "  Hyperion,"  Shelley  wrote  a  letter  which,  on 
second  thoughts,  he  left  unfinished  :  it  shows,  however,  how  en- 
tirely  he  believed  Keats  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  critics,  and  how 
he  could  bend  for  others  that  pride  which  ever  remained  erect  for 
himself 

"  To  the  Editor  of  the  '  Quarterly  Review.^ 

"Sir, 

"  Should  you  cast  your  eye  on  the  signature  of  this 
letter  before  you  read  the  contents,  you  might  imagine  that  they 
related  to  a  slanderous  paper  which  appeared  in  your  Review 
some  time  since.  I  never  notice  anonymous  attacks.  The  wretch 
who  wrote  it  has  doubtless  the  additional  reward  of  a  consciousness 
of  his  motives,  besides  the  thirty  guineas  a  sheet,  or  whatever  it  is 
that  you  pay  him.  Of  course  you  cannot  be  answerable  for  all 
the  writings  which  you  edit,  and  I  certainly  bear  you  no  ill-will 
for  having  edited  the  abuse  to  which  I  allude — indeed,  I  was  too 
much  amused  by  being  compared  to  Pharaoh,  not  to  readily  for- 
give editor,  printer,  publisher,  stitcher,  or  any  one,  excepting  the 
despicable  writer,  connected  with  something  so  exquisitely  enter- 
taining. Seriously  speaking,  I  am  not  in  the  habit  of  permitting 
myself  to  be  disturbed  by  wliat  is  said  or  written  of  me,  though 
I  dare  say,  I  may  be  condemned  sometimes  justly  enough.  But 
I  feel,  in  respect  to  the  writer  in  question,  that  '  I  am  there  sitting, 
where  he  durst  not  soar.' 

"The  case  is  different  with  the  unfortunate  subject  of  this 
letter,  the  author  of  '  Endymion,'  to  whose  feelings  and  situation 
I  entreat  you  to  allow  me  to  call  your  attention.  I  write  consid- 
erably in  the  dark ;  but  if  it  is  Mr.  GifFord  that  I  am  addressing, 
I  am  persuaded  that,  in  an  appeal  to  his  humanity  and  justice,  he 
will  acknowledge  the  fas  ah  hosfe  doceri.  I  am  aware  that  the 
first  duty  of  a  reviewer  is  towards  the  public,  and  I  am  willing 
to  confess  that  the  *  Endymion '  is  a  poem  considerably  defective, 
and  that,  perhaps,  it  deserved  as  mucli  censure  as  the  pages  of 
your  Review  record  against  it ;  but,  not  to  mention  that  there  is  a 
certain  contemptuousness  of  phraseology  from  which  it  is  difficult 


JOHN  KEATS.  143 


for  a  critic  to  abstain,  in  the  review  of '  Endyniion,'  I  do  not  think 
that  the  writer  has  given  it  its  due  praise.  Surely  the  poem,  with 
all  its  faults,  is  a  very  remarkable  production  for  a  man  of  Keats's 
age,  and  the  promise  of  ultimate  excellence  is  such  as  has  rarely 
been  afforded  even  by  such  as  have  afterwards  attained  high  lite- 
rary eminence.  Look  at  book  ii.,  line  833,  &c.,  and  book  iii., 
line  113  to  120;  read  down  that  page,  and  then  again  from  line 
193.  I  could  cite  many  other  passages,  to  convince  you  that  it 
desei'ved  milder  usage.  Why  it  should  have  been  reviewed  at 
all,  excepting  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  its  excellences  into  no- 
tice, I  cannot  conceive,  for  it  was  very  little  read,  and  there  was 
no  danger  that  it  should  become  a  model  to  the  age  of  that  false 
taste,  with  which  I  confess  that  it  is  replenished. 

''  Poor  Keats  was  thrown  into  a  dreadful  state  of  mind  by  this 
review,  which,  I  am  persuaded,  was  not  written  with  any  inten- 
tion of  pi'oducing  the  effect,  to  which  it  has,  at  least,  greatly  con- 
tributed, of  embittering  his  existence,  and  inducing  a  disease,  from 
which  there  are  now  but  faint  hopes  of  his  recovery.  The  first 
effects  are  described  to  me  to  have  resembled  insanity,  and  it  was 
by  assiduous  watching  that  he  was  restrained  from  effecting  pur- 
poses of  suicide.  The  agony  of  his  sufferings  at  length  produced 
the  rupture  of  a  blood-vessel  in  the  lungs,  and  the  usual  process 
of  consumption  appears  to  have  begun.  He  is  coming  to  pay  me 
a  visit  in  Italy ;  but  I  fear  that,  unless  his  mind  can  be  kept  tran- 
quil, little  is  to  be  hoped  from  the  mere  influence  of  climate. 

"  But  let  me  not  extort  anything  from  your  pity.  I  have  just 
seen  a  second  volume,  published  by  him  evidently  in  careless  de- 
spair. I  have  desired  my  bookseller  to  send  you  a  copy,  and 
allow  me  to  solicit  your  especial  attention  to  the  fragment  of  a 
poem  entitled  '  Hyperion,'  the  composition  of  which  was  checked 
by  the  Review  in  question.  The  great  proportion  of  this  piece  is 
surely  in  the  very  highest  style  of  poetry.  I  speak  impartially, 
for  the  canons  of  taste  to  which  Keats  has  conformed  in  his  other 
compositions,  are  the  very  reverse  of  my  own.  I  leave  you  to 
judge  for  yourself;  it  would  be  an  insult  to  you  to  suppose  that, 
from  motives  however  honprable,  you  would  lend  yourself  to  a 
deception  of  the  public."  #  *  *  * 

This  letter  was  never  sent ;  but,  in  its  place,  when  Keats  was 


144  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

dead,  Shelley  used  a  very  different  tone,  and  hurled  his  con- 
temptuous defiance  at  the  anonymous  slanderer,  in  these  memora- 
ble lines : — 

"  Our  Adonais  has  drunk  poison — oh  ! 
What  deaf  and  viperous  murderer  could  crown 
Life's  early  cup  with  such  a  draught  of  woe  ? 
The  nameless  worm  would  now  itself  disown  ; 
It  felt,  yet  could  escape  the  magic  tone 
Whose  prelude  held  all  envy,  hate  and  wrong, 
But  what  was  howling  in  one  breast  alone, 
Silent  with  expectation  of  the  song, 
Whose  master's  hand  is  cold,  whose  silver  lyre  unstrung. 

"  Live  thou,  whose  infamy  is  not  thy  fame  ! 
Live  !  fear  no  heavier  chastisement  from  me. 
Thou  noteless  blot  on  a  remembered  name  ! 
But  be  thyself,  and  know  thyself  to  be  ! 
And  ever  in  thy  season  be  thou  free 
To  spill  the  venom  when  thy  fangs  o'erflow  ; 
Remorse  and  Self-contempt  shall  cling  to  thee  ; 
Hot  Shame  shall  burn  upo^  thy  secret  brow. 
And  like  a  beaten  hound  tremble  thou  shalt— as  now, 

Adonais — Stanzas  36,  37. 

Now,  from  the  enthusiastic  friend,  let  us  turn,,  joyfully,  to  the 
undeniable  testimony  of  the  Poet  himself,  writing  confidentially 
to  his  publisher.  Mr.  He.ssey  had  sent  him  a  letter  that  appeared 
in  the  Morning  Chronicle,  of  October  3d,  earnestly  remonstrating 
against  these  examples  of  tyrannous  criticism,  and  asking  whether 
they  could  have  proceeded  from  the  translator  of  Juvenal  [Mr. 
Gifford],  who  had  prefixed  to  his  work  "  that  manly  and  pathetic 
narrative  of  genius  oppres5?ed  and  struggling  with  innumerable 
difficulties,  yet  finally  triumphing  ujider  ■patronage  and  encourage- 
ment;  or  from  the  biographer  of  Kirke  White  [Mr.  Southey], 
who  had  expostulated  with  the  monthly  reviewer,  who  sat  down 
to  blast  the  hopes  of  a  boy  who  had  confessed  to  him  all  his  hopes 
and  all  his  difficulties."  The  letter  was  signed  "J.  S.,"  and  its 
author  remained  unknown.  The  newspapers  generally  spoke 
favorably  of  "  Endymion,"  so  that  Keats  could  not  even  regard 
the  offensive   articles  as   the  general  expression   of  the  popular 


JOHN  KEATS.  145 


voice  :  he  may,  indeed,  have  experienced  a  momentary  annoy- 
ance, but,  it"  no  evidence  survived,  the  noble  candor  and  simplicity 
of  this  answer  is  quite  sufficient  to  place  the  question  in  its  true 
light,  and  to  silence  forever  the  exclamations  cither  of  honest 
wrath  or  contemptuous  compassion.  Still  the  malice  was  weak 
only  because  the  genius  was  strong ;  the  arrows  were  poisoned, 
though  the  armor  they  struck  was  proof  and  able  to  save  the  life 
within. 

9th  Oct.  1818. 
My  Dear  Hessey, 

You  are  very  good  in  sending  me  the  letters  from  the 
Chronicle,  and  I  am  very  bad  in  not  acknowledging  such  a  kind- 
ness sooner  :  pray  forgive  me.  It  has  so  chanced  that  I  have  had 
that  paper  every  day.  I  have  seen  to-day's.  I  cannot  but  feel 
indebted  to  those  gentlemen  who  have  taken  my  part.  As  for  the 
rest,  I  begin  to  gel  a  little  acquainted  with  my  own  strength  and 
weakness.  Praise  or  blame  has  but  a  momentary  effect  on  the 
man  whose  love  of  beauty  in  the  abstract  makes  him  a  severe  critic 
on  his  own  works.  My  own  domestic  criticism  has  given  me  pain 
without  comparison  beyond  what  "Blackwood"  or  the  "Quarter- 
ly" could  inflict :  and  also  when  1  feel  I  am  right,  no  external  praise 
can  give  me  such  aglow  as  my  own  solitary  reperception  and  rati- 
fication of  what  is  fine.  J.  S.  is  perfectly  right  in  regard  to  the 
"slip-shod  Endymion."  That  it  is  so,  is  no  fault  of  mine.  No! 
though  it  may  sound  a  little  paradoxical,  it  is  as  good  as  I  had  power 
to  make  it  by  myself.  Had  I  been  nervous  about  it  being  a  perfect 
piece,  and  with  that  view  asked  advice,  and  trembled  over  every 
page,  it  would  not  have  been  written  ;  for  it  is  not  in  my  nature  to 
fumble.  I  will  write  independently.  I  have  written  independently 
mthout  judgment.  I  may  write  independently,  and  with  judgment, 
hereafter.  The  Genius  of  Poetry  must  work  out  its  own  salva- 
tion in  a  man.  It  cannot  be  matui'ed  by  law  and  precept,  but  by 
sensation  and  watchfulness  in  itself.  That  which  is  creative 
must  create  itself.  In  "  Endymion  "  I  leaped  headlong  into  the 
sea,  and  thereby  have  become  better  acquainted  with  the  sound- 
ings, the  quicksands,  and  the  rocks,  than  if  I  had  stayed  upon 
the  green  shore,  and  piped  a  silly  pipe,  and  took  tea  and  comforta- 


146  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ble  advice.  I  was  never  afraid  of  failure  ;  for  I  would  sooner 
fail  than  not  be  among  the  greatest.  But  I  am  nigh  getting  into 
a  rant  ;  so,  with  remembrances  to  Taylor  and  Woodhouse,  &c., 
I  am, 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

John  Keats. 

On  returning  to  the  south,  Keats  found  his  brother  alarmingly 
ill,  and  immediately  joined  him  at  Teignmouth.  They  return- 
ed together  to  Hampstead,  where  he  gradually  sunk  under  the 
disease,  affectionately  tended  and  fraternally  mourned.  He  was 
of  a  most  gentle  and  witty  nature,  and  resembled  John  in  charac- 
ter and  appearance.  In  Keats's  copy  of  Shakspeare,  the  words 
Poor  Tom,  in  "  King  Lear,"  are  pathetically  underlined. 

Teignmouth,  Sept.  1818. 
My  Dear  Bailey, 

When  a  poor  devil  is  drowning,  it  is  said  he  comes 
thrice  to  the  surface  before  he  makes  his  final  sink  ;  if,  however, 
at  third  rise,  he  can  manage  to  catch  hold  of  a  piece  of  weed  or 
rock,  he  stands  a  fair  chance,  as  I  hope  I  do  now,  of  being  saved. 
I  have  sunk  twice  in  our  correspondence,  have  risen  twice,  and 
have  been  too  idle,  or  something  worse,  to  extricate  myself.  I 
have  sunk  the  third  time,  and  just  now  risen  again  at  this  two  of 
the  clock  p.  M.,  and  saved  myself  from  utter  perdition  by  begin- 
ning this,  all  drenched  as  I  am,  and  fresh  from  the  water.  And 
I  would  rather  endure  the  present  inconvenience  of  a  wet  jacket 
than  you  should  keep  a  laced  one  in  store  for  me.  Why  did  I 
not  stop  at  Oxford  in  my  way  ?  How  can  you  ask  such  a  ques- 
tion ?  Why  did  I  not  promise  to  do  so  ?  Did  I  not,  in  a  letter 
to  you,  make  a  promise  to  do  so  ?  Then  how  can  you  be  so  un- 
reasonable as  to  ask  me  why  I  did  not  ?  This  is  the  thing — 
(for  I  have  been  rubbing  my  invention  ;  trying  several  sleights : 
I  first  polished  a  cold,  felt  it  in  my  fingers,  tried  it  on  the  table, 
but  could  not  pocket  it :  I  tried  chilblains,  rheumatism,  gout, 
tight  boots, — nothing  of  that  sort  would  do, — so  this  is,  as  I  was 
going  to  say,  the  thing) — I  had  a  letter  from  Tom,  saying  how 
much  better  he  had  got,  and  thinking  he  had  better  stop.     I  went 


JOHN  KEATS.  147 


down  to  prevent  his  cominir  up.  Will  not  this  do?  Turn  it 
which  way  you  like — it  is  selvaged  all  round.  1  have  used  it. 
these  three  last  days,  to  keep  out  the  abominable  Devonshire 
weather.  By  the  by,  you  may  say  what  you  will  of  Devonshire  : 
the  truth  is,  it  is  a  splashy,  rainy,  misty,  snowy,  foggy,  haily, 
floody,  muddy,  slipshod  county.  The  hills  are  very  beautiful, 
when  you  get  a  sight  of  'em  ;  the  primroses  are  out, — but  then 
you  are  in  ;  the  cliffs  are  of  a  fine  deep  color,  but  then  the 
clouds  are  continually  vicing  with  them.  The  women  like  your 
London  people  in  a  sort  of  negative  way — because  the  native 
men  are  the  poorest  creatures  in  England.  When  I  think  of 
Wordsworth's  Sonnet,  "  Vanguard  of  Liberty  !  ye  men  of  Kent !" 
the  degenerated  race  about  me  are  pulvis  Ipecac,  simplex — a 
strong  dose.  Were  I  a  corsair,  I'd  make  a  descent  on  the  south 
coast  of  Devon  ;  if  I  did  not  run  the  chance  of  having  coward- 
ice imputed  to  me.  As  for  the  men,  they'd  run  away  into  the 
Methodist  meeting-houses;  and  the  women  would  be  glad  of  it. 
Had  England  been  a  large  Devonshire,  we  should  not  have  won 
the  battle  of  Waterloo.  There  are  knotted  oaks,  there  are  lusty 
rivulets,  there  are  meadows  such  as  are  not  elsewhere, — but 
there  are  no  thews  and  sinews.  "  Moore's  Almanack"  is  here 
a  curiosity :  arms,  neck,  and  shoulders  may  at  least  be  seen 
there,  and  the  ladies  read  it  as  some  out-of-the-way  romance. 
Such  a  quelling  power  have  these  thoughts  over  me  that  I  fancy 
the  very  air  of  a  deteriorating  quality.  I  fancy  the  flowers,  all 
precocious,  have  an  Acrasian  spell  about  them ;  I  feel  able  to 
beat  off  the  Devonshire  waves  like  soap-froth.  I  think  it  well, 
for  the  honor  of  England,  that  Julius  Caesar  did  not  first  land  in 
this  county.  A  Devonshirer,  standing  on  his  native  hills,  is  not 
a  distinct  object ;  he  does  not  show  against  the  light;  a  wolf  or 
two  would  dispossess  him.  I  like,  I  love  England — I  like  its 
living  men — give  me  a  long  brown  plain  for  my  money,  so  I 
may  meet  with  some  of  Edmund  Ironside's  descendants;  give  me 
a  barren  mould,  so  I  may  meet  with  some  shadowing  of  Alfred 
in  the  shape  of  a  gipsey,  a  huntsman,  or  a  shepherd.  Scenery 
is  fine,  but  human  nature  is  finer  ;  the  sward  is  richer  for  the 
tread  of  a  real  nervous  English  foot ;  the  eagle's  nest  is  finer, 
for  the  mountaineer   having  looked  into  it.     Are  these  facts  or 


148  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

prejudices  ?  Whatever  they  be,  for  them  I  shall  never  be  able  to 
relish  entirely  any  Devonsliire  scenery.  Homer  is  fine,  Achil 
les  is  fine,  Diomed  is  fine,  Shakspeare  is  fine — Hamlet  is  fine 
Lear  is  fine — but  dwindled  Englishmen  are  not  fine.  Where 
too,  the  women  are  so  passable,  and  and  have  such  English  names 
such  as  Ophelia,  Cordelia,  &c.,  that  they  should  have  such  par 
amours,  or  rather  imparamours  !  As  for  them,  I  cannot,  in  thought 
help  wishing,  as -did  the  cruel  emperor,  that  they  had  but  one 
head,  that  I  might  cut  it  off,  to  deliver  them  from  any  horrible 
courtesy  they  may  do  their  undeserving  countrymen.  I  wonder 
I  meet  with  no  born  monsters.  O !  Devonshire,  last  night  I 
thought  the  moon  had  dwindled  in  heaven. 

I  have  never  had  your  Sermon  from  Wordsworth,  but  Mr. 
Dilke  lent  it  me.  You  know  my  ideas  about  Religion.  I  do  not 
think  myself  more  in  the  right  than  other  people,  and  that  nothing 
in  this  world  is  provable.  I  wish  I  could  enter  into  all  your 
feelings  on  the  subject,  merely  for  one  short  ten  minutes,  and 
give  you  a  page  or  two  to  your  liking.  I  am  sometimes  so  very 
skeptical  as  to  think  Poetry  itself  a  mere  Jack  o'  Lanthorn  to 
amuse  whoever  may  chance  to  be  struck  with  its  brilliance.  As 
tradesmen  say  every  .thing  is  worth  what  it  will  fetch,  so  probably 
every  mental  pursuit  takes  its  reality  and  worth  from  the  ardor  of 
the  pursuer — being  in  itself  a  nothing.  Ethereal  things  may  at 
least  be  thus  real,  divided  under  three  heads — things  real,  things 
semi-real,  and  nothings  ;  things  real,  such  as  existences  of  sun, 
moon,  and  stars,  and  passages  of  Shakspeare  ;  things  semi-real, 
such  as  love,  the  clouds,  &c.,  which  require  a  greeting  of  the 
spirit  to  make  them  wholly  exist ;  and  nothings,  which  are  made 
great  and  dignified  by  an  ardent  pursuit — which,  by  the  by,  stamp 
the  Burgundy-mark  on  the  bottles  of  our  minds,  insomuch  as  they 
are  able  to  '■'■consecrate  ichate'er  they  look  upon.^'  I  have  written 
a  sonnet  here  of  a  somewhat  collateral  nature.  So  don't  imagine 
it  is  "  apropos  des  bottes." 

"  Four  seasons  fill  the  measure  of  the  year,"  &c.* 

Aye,  this  may  be  carried — but  what  am  I  talking  of  ?  It  is 
an  old  maxim,  of  mine,  and  of  course  must  bo  well  known,  that 

*  See  the  "  Literary  Remains." 


JOHN  KEATS.  149 

every  point  of  tliouglit  is  the  centre  of  an  inlellfctuul  world.  The 
two  uppermost  thouglifs  in  a  man's  mind  aro  the  two  poles  of  his 
world  ;  he  revolves  on  them,  and  every  thing  is  southward  and 
northward  to  him  through  their  means.  We  take  but  three  steps 
from  feathers  to  iron.  Now,  my  dear  fellow,  I  must,  once  for  all, 
tell  you  I  have  not  one  idea  of  the  truth  of  any  of  my  specula- 
tions:  I  shall  never  be  a  reasoner,  because  I  care  not  to  be  in  the 
right,  when  retired  from  bickering  and  in  a  proper  philosophical 
temper.  So  you  must  not  stare,  if,  in  any  future  letter,  I  endea- 
vor to  prove  that  Apollo,  as  he  had  catgut  strings  to  liis  lyre,  used 
a  cat's  paw  as  a  pecten — and,  further,  from  [the]  said  pecten's 
reiterated  and  continual  teasing,  came  the  term  hen-pecked. 

My  brother  Tom  desires  to  be  remembered  to  you  ;  he  lias 
just  this  moment  had  a  spitting  of  blood,  poor  fellow  !  Remember 
me  to  Grey  and  Whitehead. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

JoHX  Keats. 


[Posl-muik  Hamfstead,  27  Oct.,  1818  ] 
My  Dear  Woodhouse, 

Your  letter  gave  me  great  satisfaction,  more  on 
account  of  its  friendliness  than  any  relish  of  that  matter  in  it 
which  is  accounted  so  acceptable  in  the  "genus  irritabile."  The 
best  answer  I  can  give  you  is  in  a  clerklike  manner  to  make 
some  observations  on  two  principal  points  which  seem  to  point  like 
indices  into  the  midst  of  the  whole  pro  and  con  about  genius,  and 
views,  and  achievements,  and  ambition,  et  cetera.  1st.  As  to  the 
poetical  character  itself  (I  mean  that  sort,  of  which,  if  I  am  any 
thing,  I  am  a  member;  that  sort  distinguished  from  the  Words- 
worthian,  or  egotistical  sublime  ;  whicii  is  a-  thing  per  se,  and 
stands  alone),  it  is  not  itself — it  has  no  self — it  is  every  thing  and 
nothing — it  has  no  character — it  enjoys  light  and  shade — it  lives 
in  gusts,  be  it  foul  or  fair,  high  or  low,  rich  or  poor,  mean  or  ele- 
vated,— it  has  as  much  delight  in  conceiving  an  lago  as  an  Imo- 
gen. What  shocks  the  virtuous  philosopher  delights  the  cameleon 
poet.      It  does  no  harm  i'rom  its  relish  of  the  dark  side  of  things, 


150  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

any  more  than  from  its  taste  for  the  bright  one,  because  they  both 
end  in  speculation.  A  poet  is  the  most  unpoetical  of  any  thing  in 
existence,  because  he  has  no  identity  ;  he  is  continually  in  for, 
and  filling,  some  other  body.  The  sun,  the  moon,  the  sea,  and 
men  and  women,  who  are  creatures  of  impulse,  are  poetical,  and 
have  about  them  an  unchangeable  attribute  ;  the  poet  has  none, 
no  identity.  He  is  certainly  the  most  unpoetical  of  all  God's 
creatures.  If,  then,  he  has  no  self,  and  if  I  am  a  poet,  where  is 
the  wonder  that  I  should  say  I  would  write  no  more  ?  Might  I 
not  at  that  very  instant  have  been  cogitating  on  the  characters  of 
Saturn  and  Ops  ?  It  is  a  wretched  thing  to  confess,  but  it  is  a 
very  fact,  that  not  one  word  I  ever  utter  can  be  taken  for  granted 
as  an  opinion  growing  out  of  my  identical  nature.  How  can  it, 
when  I  have  no  nature  ?  When  I  am  in  a  room  with  people,  if  I 
am  free  from  speculating  on  creations  of  my  own  brain,  then,  not 
myself  goes  home  to  myself,  but  the  identity  of  every  one  in  the 
room  begins  to  press  upon  me,  [so]  that  I  am  in  a  very  little  time 
annihilated — not  only  among  men  ;  it  would  be  the  same  in  a 
nursery  of  children.  I  know  not  whether  I  make  myself  wholly 
understood  :  I  hope  enough  to  let  you  see  that  no  dependence  is 
to  be  placed  on  what  I  said  that  day. 

In  the  second  place,  I  will  speak  of  my  views,  and  of  the  life 
I  purpose  to  myself.  I  am  ambitious  of  doiog  the  world  some 
good  :  if  I  should  be  spared,  that  may  be  the  work  of  future  years 
— in  the  interval  I  will  assay  to  reach  to  as  high  a  summit  in 
poetry  as  the  nerve  bestowed  upon  me  will  suffer.  The  faint 
conceptions  I  have  of  poems  to  come  bring  the  blood  frequently 
into  my  forehead.  All  I  hope  is,  that  I  may  not  lose  all  interest 
in  human  affairs — that  the  solitary  indifference  I  feel  for  applause, 
even  from  the  finest  spirits,  will  not  blunt  any  acuteness  of  vision 
I  may  have.  I  do  not  think  it  will.  I  feel  assured  I  should  write 
from  the  mere  yearning  and  fondness  I  have  for  the  beautiful, 
even  if  my  night's  labors  should  be  burnt  every  morning,  and  no 
eye  ever  shine  upon  them.  But  even  now  I  am  perhaps  not 
speaking  from  myself,  but  from  some  character  in  whose  soul  I 
now  live. 

I  am  sure,  however,  that  this  next  sentence  is  from  myself. — 


JOHN  Kf]ATS.  151 


I   feel  your  anxiety,  good  opinion,   and  friendship,  in  the  highest 
degree,  and  am 

Yours  most  sincerely, 

John  Keats. 

Oct.  29,  1818. 

My  Dear  George, 

There  was  a  part  in  your  letter  which  gave  me 
great  pain ;  that  where  you  lament  not  receiving  letters  from 
England.  I  intended  to  have  written  immediately  on  my  return 
from  Scotland  (which  was  two  months  earlier  than  I  intended,  on 
account  of  my  own,  as  well  as  Tom's  health),  but  then  I  was  told 
by  Mrs.  W.  that  you  had  said  you  did  not  wish  any  one  to  write, 
till  we  had  heard  from  you.  This  I  thought  odd,  and  now  I  see 
that  it  could  not  have  been  so.  Yet,  at  the  time,  I  suffered  my 
unreflecting  head  to  be  satisfied,  and  went  on  in  that  sort  of  care- 
less and  restless  life  with  which  you  are  well  acquainted.  I  am 
grieved  to  say  that  T  am  not  sorry  you  had  not  letters  at  Philadel- 
phia :  you  could  have  had  no  good  news  of  Tom ;  and  I  have 
been  withheld,  on  his  account,  from  beginning  these  many  days. 
I  could  not  bring  myself  to  say  the  truth,  that  he  is  no  better,  but 
much  worse :  however,  it  must  be  told,  and  you,  my  dear  brother 
and  sister,  take  example  from  me,  and  bear  up  against  any  ca- 
lamity, for  my  sake,  as  I  do  for  yours.  Ours  are- ties,  which, 
independent  of  their  own  sentiment,  are  sent  us  by  Providence,  to 
prevent  the  effects  of  one  great  solitary  grief:  I  have  Fanny,* 
and  I  have  you — three  people  whose  iiappiness,  to  me,  is  sacred, 
and  it  does  annul  that  selfish  sorrow  which  I  should  otherwise  fall 
into,  living,  as  I  do,  with  poor  Tom,  who  looks  upon  me  as  his 
only  comfort.  The  tears  will  come  into  your  eyes :  let  them  ; 
and  embrace  each  other :  thank  Heaven  for  what  happiness  you 
have,  and,  after  thinking  a  moment  or  two  that  you  sutfer  in  com- 
mon with  all  mankind,  hold  it  not  a  sin  to  regain  your  cheerful- 
ness. 

Your  welfare  is  a  delight  to  me  wiiich  I  cannot  e.xpress.    The 
moon  is  now  shining  full  and  brilliant ;  she  is  the  same  to  mc  in 

His  sister. 


152  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

matter  that  j'ou  are  in  spirit.  If  you  were  here,  my  dear  sister, 
I  could  not  pronounce  the  words  which  1  can  write  to  you  from  a 
distance.  I  have  a  tenderness  for  you,  and  an  admiration  whicli 
I  feel  to  be  as  great  and  more  chaste  than  I  can  have  for  any 
woman  in  the  Avorld.  You  will  mention  Fanny — her  character 
is  not  formed  ;  her  identity  does  not  press  upon  me  as  yours  does. 
1  hope  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  that  I  may  one  day  feel  as 
much  for  her  as  I  do  for  you.  I  know  not  how  it  is,  my  dear 
brother,  I  have  never  made  any  acquaintance  of  my  own — nearly 
all  through  your  medium  ;  through  you  I  know,  not  only  a  sister, 
but  a  glorious  human  being  ;  and  now  I  am  talking  of  those  to 
whom  you  have  made  me  known,  I  cannot  forbear  mentioning 
Haslam,  as  a  most  kind,  and  obliging,  and  con.-tant  friend.  His 
behavior  to  Tom  during  my  absence,  and  since  my  return,  has 
endeared  him  to  me  for  ever,  besides  his  anxiety  about  you. 

To-morrow  I  shall  call  on  your  mother  and  exchange  in- 
formation with  her.  I  intend  to  write  you  such  columns  that  it 
will  be  impossible  for  me  to  keep  any  order  or  method  in  what  I 
wi'ite  ;  that  will  come  first  which  is  uppermost  in  my  mind  ;  not 
that  which  is  uppermost  in  my  heart.  Besides,  I  should  wish 
to  give  you  a  picture  of  our  lives  here,  whenever  by  a  touch  I 
can  do  it. 

I  came  by  ship  from  Inverness,  and  was  nine  days  at  sea 
without  being  sick.  A  little  qualm  now  and  then  put  me  in 
mind  of  you  ;  however,  as  soon  as  you  touch  the  shore,  all  the 
horrors  of  sickness  are  soon  forgotten,  as  was  the  case  with  a 
lady  on  board,  who  could  not  hold  her  head  up  all  the  way.  We 
had  not  been  into  the  Thames  an  hour  before  her  tongue  began 
to  some  tune — paying  off,  as  it  was  fit  she  should,  all  old  scores. 
I  was  the  only  Englishman  on  board.  There  was  a  downright 
Scotchman,  who,  hearing  that  there  had  been  a  bad  crop  of  pota- 
toes in  England,  had  brought  some  triumphant  specimens  from 
Scotland.  These  he  exhibited  with  natural  pride  to  all  the 
ignorant  lightermen  and  watermen  fram  the  Nore  to  the  Bridge. 
I  fed  upon  beef  all  the  way,  not  being  able  to  eat  the  thick 
porridge  which  the  ladies  managed  to  manage,  with  large,  awk- 
ward, horn-spoons  info  the  bargain.  Reynolds  has  returned  from 
a  six-weeks'  enjoyment  in  Devonshire  ;   he  is  well,  and  persuades 


JOHN  KEATS.  153 


nie  lo  publish  my  "  Pot  of  Basil,"  in  answer  to  the  attack  made 
on  mo  in  "  Blackwood's  Magazine"  and  the  "  Quarterly  Review." 
There  have  been  two  letters  in  my  defence  in  the  Chronicle,  and 
one  in  the  Examiner,  copied  from  the  Exeter  paper,  and  written 
by  Reynolds.  I  don't  know  who  wrote  those  in  the  Chronicle. 
This  is  a  mere  matter  of  moment :  I  think  I  shall  be  among  the 
English  Poets  after  my  death.  Even  as  a  matter  of  present 
interest,  the  attempt  to  crush  me  in  the  "  Quarterly"  has  onlj 
brought  me  more  into  notice,  and  it  is  a  common  expression  among 
book-men,  "  I  wonder  the  '  Quarterly'  should  cut  its  own  throat." 
It  does  me  not  the  least  harm  in  society  to  make  me  appear  little 
and  ridiculous :  I  know  when  a  man  is  superior  to  me,  and  give 
him  all  due  respect;  he  will  be  the  last  to  laugh  at  me;  and,  as 
for  the  rest,  I  feel  that  1  make  "an  impression  upon  them  which 
insures  me  personal  respect  while  I  am  in  sight,  vvhatever  they 
may  say  when  my  back  is  turned. 

The  Misses are  very  kind  to  me,  but  they  have   lately 

displeased  me  much,  and  in  this  way : — now  I  am  coming  the 
Richardson  ! — On  my  return,  the  first  day  I  called,  they  were  in  a 
sort  of  taking  or  bustle  about  a  cousin  of  theirs,  who,  having  fallen 
out  with  her  grandpapa  in  a  serious  manner,  was  invited  by  Mrs. 

to  take  asylum  in  her  house.     She  is   an  East-Indian,  and 

ought  to  be  her  grandfather's  heir.      At  the  time   I  called,  Mrs. 

was  in  conference  with  her  up  stairs,  and  the  young  ladies 

were  warm  in  her  praise  down  stairs,  calling  her  genteel,  inter- 
esting, and  a  thousand  pretty  things,  to  which  I  gave  no  heed, 
not  being  partial  to  nine  days'  wonders.  Now  all  is  completely 
changed  :  they  hate  her,  and,  from  what  I  hear,  she  is  not  without 
faults  of  a  real  kind  ;  but  she  has  others,  which  are  more  apt  to 
make  women  of  inferior  claims  hate  her.  She  is  not  a  Cleopatra, 
but  is,  at  least,  a  Charmian  :  she  has  a  rich  Eastern  look  ;  she 
has  fine  eyes,  and  fine  manners.  When  she  comes  into  the  room 
she  makes  the  same  impression  as  the  beauty  of  a  leopardess. 
She  is  too  fine  and  too  conscious  of  herself  to  repulse  any  man 
who  may  address  her :  from  habit  she  tliinks  that  nothing  particu- 
lar. I  always  find  myself  at  ease  with  such  a  woman  :  the  pic- 
ture before  me  always  gives  me  a  life  and  animation  which  I  can- 
not possibly  feel  with   any  thing  inferior.     I  am,  at  such  limes, 


154  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

too  much  occupied  in  admiring  to  be  awkward  or  in  a  tremble  :  I 
forget  myself  entirely,  because  I  live  in  her.  You  will,  by  this 
time,  think  1  am  in  love  with  her,  so,  before  I  go  any  further,  I 
will  tell  you  I  am  not.  She  kept  me  awake  one  night,  as  a  tune 
of  Mozart's  might  do.  I  speak  of  the  thing  as  a  pastime  and  an 
amusement,  than  which  1  can  feel  none  deeper  than  a  conversa- 
tion with  an  imperial  woman,  the  very  "  yes"  and  "no"  of  whose 
life  is  to  me  a  banquet.  I  don't  cry  to  take  the  moon  home  with 
me  in  my  pocket,  not  do  I  fret  to  leave  her  behind  me.  I  like 
her,  and  her  like,  because  one  has  no  ■sensation  :  what  we  both 
are  is  taken  for  granted.     You  will   suppose  I  have,  by  this,  had 

iTfiuch  talk  with  her — no  such  thing ;  there  are  the  Misses 

on  the  look  out.  They  think  I  don't  admire  her  because  I  don't 
stare  at  her  ;  they  call  her  a  flirt  to  me — what  a  want  of  know- 
ledge !  She  walks  across  a  room  in  such  a  manner  that  a  man 
is  drawn  towards  her  with  magnetic  power ;  this  they  call  flirt- 
ing !  They  do  not  know  things;  they  do  not  know  what  a  woman 
is.  I  believe,  though,  she  has  faults,  the  same  as  Charmian  and 
Cleopatra  might  have  had.  Yet  she  is  a  fine  thing,  speaking  in  a 
worldly  way ;  for  there  are  two  distinct  tempers  of  mind  in  which 
we  judge  of  things — the  worldly,  theatrical  and  pantomimical ; 
and  the  unearthly,  spiritual  and  ethereal.  In  the  former,  Bona- 
parte, Lord  Byron,  and  this  Charmian,  hold  the  first  place  in  our 
minds ;  in  the  latter,  John  Howard,  Bishop  Hooker  rocking  his 
child's  cradle,  and  you,  my  dear  sister,  are  the  conquering  feel- 
ings. As  a  man  of  the  world,  I  love  the  rich  talk  of  a  Charmian; 
as  an  eternal  being,  I  love  the  thought  of  you.  I  should  like  her 
to  ruin  me,  and  I  should  like  you  to  save  me. 

"  I  am  free  from  men  of  pleasure's  cares, 
By  dint  of  feelings  far  more  deep  than  theirs." 

This  is  "  Lord  Byron,"  and  is  one  of  the  finest  things  he  has 
said. 

I  have  no  town-talk  for  you  :  as  for  politics,  they  are,  in  my 
opinion,  only  sleepy,  because  they  will  soon  be  wide  awake. 
Perhaps  not ;  for  the  long-continued  peace  of  England  has  given 
us  notions  of  personal  safety  which  are  likely  to  prevent  the  re- 


JOHN  KEATS.  155 


establishment  of  our  national  honesty.  There  is,  of  a  truth,  no- 
thing manly  or  sterling  in  any  part  of  the  Government.  There 
are  many  madmen  in  the  country,  I  have  no  doubt,  who  would 
like  to  be  beheaded  on  Tower-hill,  merely  because  of  the  sake  of 
(cJal ;  there  are  many  men,  who,  like  Hunt,  from  a  principle  of 
taste,  would  like  to  see  things  go  on  better ;  there  are  many,  like 
Sir  F.  Burdett,  who  like  to  sit  at  the  l*ead  of  political  dinners ; — 
but  there  are  none  prepared  to  suffer  in  obscurity*  for  their 
country.  The  motives  of  our  worst  men  are  interest,  and  of  our 
best  vanity  ;  we  have  no  Milton,  or  Algernon  Sidney.  Go- 
vernors, in  these  days,  lose  the  title  of  man,  in  exchange  for  that 
of  Diplomale  or  Minister.  We  breathe  a  sort  of  official  atmo- 
sphere. All  the  departments  of  Government  have  strayed  far 
from  simplicity,  which  is  the  greatest  of  strength.  There  is  as 
much  difference  in  this,  between  the  present  Government  and 
Oliver  Cromwell's,  as  there  is  between  the  Twelve  Tables  of 
Rome  and  the  volumes  of  Civil  Law  which  were  digested  by 
Justinian.  A  man  now  entitled  Chancelor  has  the  same  honor 
paid  him,  whether  he  be  a  hog  or  a  Lord  Bacon.  No  sensation 
is  created  by  greatness,  but  by  the  number  of  Orders  a  man  has 
at  his  button-hole.  Notwithstanding  the  noise  the  Liberals  make 
in  favor  of  the  cause  of  Napoleon,  I  cannot  but  think  he  has  done 
more  harm  to  the  life  of  Liberty  than  any  one  else  could  have 
done.  Not  that  the  Divine  Right  gentlemen  have  done,  or  intend 
to  do,  any  good — no,  they  have  taken  a  lesson  of  him,  and  w-ill 
do  all  the  further  harm  he  would  have  done,  without  any  of  the 
good.  The  worst  thing  he  has  taught  them  is,  how  to  organize- 
their  monstrous  armies.  The  Emperor  Alexander,  it  is  said,  in- 
tends to  divide  his  Empire,  as  did  Dioclesian,  creating  two  Czars 
besides  himself,  and  continuing  supreme  monarch  of  the  whole. 
Should  he  so  do,  and  they,  for  a  series  of  years,  keep  peaceable 
among  themselves,  Russia  may  spread  her  conquest  even  to 
China.  I  think  it  a  very  likely  thing  that  China  may  fall  of 
itself:  Turkey  certainly  will.  Meanwhile  European  North  Rus- 
sia will  hold  its  horn  against  the  rest  of  Europe,  intriguing  con- 
stantly with  France.  Dilke,  whom  you  know  to  be  a  Godwin- 
perfectibility  man,  pleases  himself  with  the  idea  that  America 
will  be  the  country  to  take  up  the  human  intellect  where  Eng- 


156  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

land  leaves  off.  I  differ  there  with  him  greatly  :  a  country  like 
the  United  States,  whose  greatest  men  are  Franklins  and  VVash- 
in^tons,  will  never  do  that :  they  are  great  men  doubtless  ;  but 
how  are  they  to  be  compared  to  those,  our  countrymen,  Milton 
and  the  two  Sidneys  ?  The  one  is  a  philosophical  Quaker,  full 
of  mean  and  thrifty  maxims  ;  the  other  sold  the  very  charger 
who  had  taken  him  through  all  his  battles.  Those  Americans 
are  great,  but  they  are  not  sublime  men  ;  the  humanity  of  the 
United  States  can  never  reach  the  sublime.  Birkbeck's  mind  is 
too  much  in  the  American  style  ;  you  must  endeavor  to  enforce 
a  little  spirit  of  another  sort  into  the  settlement, — always  with 
great  caution  ;  for  thereby  you  may  do  your  descendants  more 
good  than  you  may  imagine.  If  I  had  a  prayer  to  make  for  any 
great  good,  next  to  Tom's  recovery,  it  should  be  that  one  of  your 
children  should  be  the  first  American  poet.  I  have  a  great  mind 
to  make  a  prophecy  ;  and  they  say  that  prophecies  work  out  their 
own  fulfillment. 

'Tie  the  witching  hour  of  night, 
Orbed  is  the  moon  and  brig^ht. 
And  the  stars  they  glisten,  glisten/ 
Seeming  with  bright  eyes  to  listen — 

For  what  listen  they  ? 
For  a  song  and  for  a  charm, 
See  they  glisten  in  alarm. 
And  the  moon  is  waxing  warm 

To  hear  what  I  shall  say. 

Moon  !  keep  wide  thy  golden  ears — 
Hearken,  stars  I  and  hearken,  spheres  ! — 
Hearken,  thou  eternal  sky  ! 
I  sing  an  infant's  lullaby, 

A  pretty  lullaby. 
Listen,  listen,  listen,  listen. 
Glisten,  glisten,  glisten,  glisten, 

And  hear  my  lullaby  ! 
Though  the  rushes  that  will  make 
Its  cradle  still  are  in  the  lake — 
Though  the  linen  that  will  be 
Its  swathe,  is  on  the  cotton  tree — 
Though  the  woolen  that  will  keep 
It  warm,  is  on  the  silly  sheep — 


JOHN  KEATS.  157 


Listen,  starlight,  listen,  listen. 
Glisten,  glisten,  glisten,  glisten. 

And  hear  my  lullaby  I 
Child,  I  see  thee  !  Child,  I've  found  thee 
Midst  of  the  quiet  all  around  thee  ! 
Child,  I  see  thee  !   Child,  I  spy  thee  ! 
And  thy  mother  sweet  is  nigh  thee  ! 
Child,  I  know  thee  !  Child,  no  more. 
But  a  poet  evermore  ! 
See,  see,  the  lyre,  the  lyre. 
In  a  flame  of  fire. 
Upon  the  little  cradle's  top 
Flaring,  flaring,  flaring. 
Past  the  eyesight's  bearing. 
Awake  it  from  its  sleep. 
And  see  if  it  can  keep 
Its  eyes  upon  the  blaze — 

Amaze,  amaze! 
It  stares,  it  stares,  it  stares. 
It  dares  what  no  one  dares  ! 
It  lifts  its  little  hand  into  the  flame 
Unharmed,  and  on  the  strings 
Paddles  a  little  tune,  and  sings. 
With  dumb  endeavor  sweetly — 
Bard  art  thou  completely  ! 

Little  child 

0'  th'  western  wild. 
Bard  art  thou  completely  ! 
Sweetly  with  dumb  endeavor, 
A  poet  now  or  never. 

Little  child 

O'  th'  western  wild, 
A  poet  now  or  never  ! 

Notwithstanding  your  happiness  and  your  recommendations,  I 
hope  I  shall  never  marry  ;  though  the  most  beautiful  creature 
were  waiting  for  me  at  the  end  of  a  journey  or  a  walk ;  though 
the  carpet  were  of  silk,  and  the  curtains  of  the  morning  clouds, 
the  chairs  and  sofas  stuffed  with  cygnet's  down,  the  food  manna, 
the  wine  beyond  claret,  the  window  opening  on  Winandermere,  I 
should  not  feel,  or  rather  my  happiness  should  not  be,  so  fine  ; 
my  solitude  is  sublime — for,  instead  of  what  I  have  desciiLed, 
there  is  a  sublimity  to  welcome   me  home  ;  the  roaring  of  the 

8 


158  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

wind  is  my  wife  ;  and  the  stars  through  my  window-panes  are 
my  children  ;  the  mighty  abstract  Idea  of  Beauty  in  all  things,  I 
liave,  stilles  the  more  divided  and  minute  domestic  happiness. 
An  amiable  wife  and  sweet  children  1  contemplate  as  part  of  that 
Beauty,  but  I  must  have  a  thousand  of  those  beautiful  particles  to 
fill  up  my  heart.  I  feel  more  and  more  every  day,  as  my  imagi- 
nation strengthens,  that  I  do  not  live  in  this  world  alone,  but  in  a 
thousand  worlds.  No  sooner  am  1  alone,  than  shapes  of  epic 
greatness  are  stationed  around  me,  and  serve  my  spirit  the  oflice 
which  is  equivalent  to  a  King's  Bodyguard  :  "  then  Tragedy  whh 
scepter'd  pall  comes  sweeping  by  :"  according  to  my  state  of 
mind,  I  am  with  Achilles  shouting  in  the  trenches,  or  with  Theo- 
critus in  the  vales  of  Sicily ;  or  throw  my  whole  being  into  Troi- 
lus,  and,  repeating  those  lines,  "  I  wander  like  a  lost  soul  upon 
the  Stygian  bank,  staying  for  waftage,"  I  melt  into  the  air  with  a 
voluptuousness  so  delicate,  that  I  am  content  to  be  alone.  Those 
things,  combined  with  the  opinion  I  have  formed  of  the  generality 
of  women,  who  appear  to  me  as  children  to  whom  1  would  rather 
give  a  sugar-plum  than  my  time,  form  a  barrier  against  matrimo- 
ny which  I  rejoice  in.  I  have  written  this  that  you  might  see 
that  1  have  my  share  of  the  highest  pleasures  of  life,  and  that, 
though  I  may  choose  to  pass  my  days  alone,  I  shall  be  no  solitary  ;• 
you  see  there  is  nothing  splenetic  in  all  this.-  The  only  thing 
that  can  ever  affect  me  personally  for  more  than  one  short  pass- 
ing day,  is  any  doubt  about  my  powers  for  poetry :  I  seldom  have 
any ;  and  I  look  with  hope  to  the  nighing  time  when  I  shall  have 
none.  I  am  as  happy  as  a  man  can  be — that  is,  in  myself;  I 
should  be  happier  if  Tom  were  well,  and  if  I  knew  you  were 
passing  pleasant  days.  Then  I  should  be  most  enviable — with 
the  yearning  passion  I  have  for  the  beautiful,  connected  and  made 
one  with  the  the  ambition  of  my  intellect.  Think  of  my  pleasure 
in  solitude  in  comparison  w-ith  my  commerce  with  the  world  : 
there  I  am  a  child,  there  they  do  not  know  me,  not  even  my  most 
intimate  acquaintance  ;  I  give  into  their  feelings  as  though  I  were 
refraining  from  imitating  a  little  child.  Some  think  me  middling, 
others  silly,  others  foolish  :  every  one  thinks  he  sees  my  weak 
side  against  my  will,  when,  in  truth,  it  is  with  my  will.  I  am 
content  to  be  thought  all  this,  because  I  have  in  my  own   breast 


JOHN  KEATS.  159 


so  frroat  a  resource.  This  is  one  great  reason  why  they  like  me 
so,  because  they  can  all  show  to  advantage  in  a  room,  and  eclipse 
(from  a  certain  tact)  one  who  is  reckoned  to  be  a  good  poet.  I 
hope  I  am  not  hero  playing  tricks  "  to  make  the  angels  weep."  I 
think  not ;  for  I  have  not  the  least  contempt  for  my  species  ;  and, 
though  it  may  sound  parodoxical,  my  greatest  elevations  of  soul 
leave  me  every  time  more  humbled.  Enough  of  this,  though,  in 
your  love  for  me,  you  will  not  think   it  enough. 

Tom  is  rather  more  easy  than  he  has  been,  but  is  still  so 
nervous  that  I  cannot  speak  to  him  of  you  ; — indeed  it  is  the  care 
I  have  had  to  keep  his  mind  aloof  from  feelings  too  acute,  that  has 
made  this  letter  so  rambling.  I  did  not  like  to  write  before  him 
a  letter  he  knew  was  to  reach  your  hands  ;  I  cannot  even  now 
ask  him  for  any  message  ;  his  heart  speaks  to  you. 

Be  as  happy  as  you  can,  and  believe  me,  dear  Brother  and 
Sister,  your  anxious  and  affectionate  Brother, 

John. 
This  is  my  birth-day. 

Well  Walk,  lYyu.  24tJi,  1818. 
My  Dear  Rice, 

Your  amende  honorable  I  must  call  "?/w  surcroit  d'amiti^,'^ 
for  1  am  not  at  all  sensible  of  any  thing  but  that  you  were  unfor- 
tunately engaged,  and  I  was  unfortunately  in  a  hurry.  1  com- 
pletely understand  your  feeling  in  this  mistake,  and  find  in  it  that 
balance  of  comfort  which  remains  after  regretting  your  uneasi- 
ness. I  have  long  made  up  my  mind  to  take  for  granted  the 
genuine-heartedness  of  my  friends,  notwithstanding  any  temporary 
ambiguousness  in  their  behavior  or  their  tongues — nothing  of 
which,  however,  I  had  the  least  scent  of  this  morning.  I  say 
completely  understand  ;  for  I  am  everlastingly  getting  my  mind 
into  such  like  painful  trammels — and  am  even  at  this  moment 
suffering  under  them  in  the  case  of  a  friend  of  ours.  I  will  tell 
you  two  most  unfortunate  and  parallel  slips — it  seems  downright 
pre-intention  :  A  friend  says  to  me,  "  Keats,  I  shall  go  and  see 
Severn  this  week." — "  Ah  !  (says  I)  you  want  him  to  take  your 
portrait."     And  again,  "  Keats,"  says  a  friend,  "  when  will  you 


160  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


come  to  town  again  ?"  "  I  will,"  says  I,  "  let  you  have  the  MS. 
next  week."  In  both  these  cases  I  appeared  to  attribute  an  in- 
terested motive  to  each  of  my  friends'  questions — the  first  made 
him  flush,  the  second  made  him  look  angry  : — and  yet  I  am  in- 
nocent in  both  cases  ;  my  mind  leapt  over  every  interval,  to  what 
I  saw  was,  per  se,  a  pleasant  subject  with  him.  You  see  I  have 
no  allowances  to  make — you  see  how  far  I  am  from  supposing 
you  could  show  me  any  neglect.  I  very  much  regret  the  long 
time  I  have  been  obliged  to  exile  from  you  ;  for  I  have  one  or 
two  rather  pleasant  occasions  to  confer  upon  with  you.  What  I 
have  heard  from  George  is  favorable.  I  expect  a  letter  from  the 
settlement  itself. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 
I  cannot  give  any  good  news  of  Tom. 

Wentworth  Place,  Hamfstead,  18  Dec.  1818. 
My  Dear  Woodhouse, 

I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you.  I  must  needs  feel  flattered 
by  making  an  impression  on  a  set  of  ladies.  I  should  be  content 
to  do  so  by  meretricious  romance  verse,  if  they  alone,  and  not 
men,  were  to  judge.  I  should  like  very  much  to  know  those 
ladies — though  look  here,  Woodhouse — 1  have  a  new  leaf  to  turn 
over  :  I  must  work  ;  I  must  read  ;  I  must  write.  I  am  unable  to 
afford  time  for  new  acquaintances.  I  am  scarcely  able  to  do  my 
duty  to  those  I  have.  Leave  the  matter  to  chance.  But  do  not 
forget  to  give  my  remembrances  to  your  cousin. 

Yours  most  sincerely, 

John  Keats. 

My  Dear  Reynolds, 

Believe  me,  I  have  rather  rejoiced  at  your  happiness 
than  fretted  at  your  silence.  Indeed  I  am  grieved,  on  your  ac- 
count, that  I  am  not  at  the  same  time  happy.  But  I  conjure  you 
to  think,  at  present,  of  notliing  but  pleasure  ;  "  Gather  the  rose," 
&c.,  gorge  the  honey  of  life.  I  pity  you  as  much  that  it  cannot 
last  for  ever,  as  I  do  myself  now  drinking  bitters.     Give  yourself 


JOHN  KEATS.  161 


up  to  it — you  cannot  hnlp  it — and  I  have  a  consolation  in  thinking 
so.  T  never  was  in  love,  yet  the  voice  and  shape  of  a  woman  has 
haunted  me  these  two  days — at  such  a  time  when  the  relief,  the 
feverish  relief  of  poetry,  seems  a  much  less  crime.  This  morn- 
ing poetry  has  conquered — I  have  relapsed  into  those  abstractions 
which  are  my  only  life — I  feel  escaped  from  a  new,  strange,  and 
threatening  sorrow,  and  I  am  thankful  for  it.  There  is  an  awful 
warmth  about  my  heart,  like  a  load  of  Immortality. 

Poor  Tom — that  woman  and  poetry  were  ringing  changes  in 
my  senses.  Now  I  am,  in  comparison,  happy.  I  am  sensible 
this  will  distress  you — you  must  forgive  me.  Had  I  known  you 
would  have  set  out  so  soon  I  would  have  sent  you  the  "  Pot  of 
Basil,"  for  I  had  copied  it  out  ready.  Here  is  a  free  translation 
of  a  Sonnet  of  Ronsard,  which  I  think  will  please  you.  I  have 
the  loan  of  his  works — they  have  great  beauties. 


Nature  withheld  Cassandra  in  the  skies. 

For  more  adornment,  a  full  thousand  years ; 

She  took  their  cream  of  Beauty's  fairest  dies, 

And  shaped  and  tinted  her  above  all  Peers  : 

Meanwhile  Love  kept  her  dearly  with  his  wings, 

And  underneath  her  shadow  filled  her  eyes 

With  such  a  richness  that  the  cloudy  Kings 

Of  high  Olympus  uttered  slavish  sighs. 

"When  from  the  Heavens  I  saw  her  first  descend. 

My  heart  took  fire,  and  only  burning  pains, 

They  were  my  pleasures — they  my  Life's  sad  end  ; 

Love  poured  her  beauty  into  my  warm  veins, 

[So  that  her  image  in  my  soul  upgrew, 

The  only  thing  adorable  and  true." — Ed.\* 


*  The  second  sonnet  in  the  "Ainours  de  Cassandra  :"  she  was  a  damosel 
of  Blois — "  Villa  de  Blois — naissance  de  ma  dame." 

"  Nature  ornant  Cassandre,  qui  dauoit 
De  sa  douceur  forcer  les  plus  rebellcs. 
La  composa  de  cent  beautez  nouuelles 
Que  des  mille  ans  en  espargne  elle  auoit. — 
De  tous  les  biens  qu'  Amour  au  Ciel  couuoit 


162  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

I  had  not  the  original  by  me  when  I  wrote  it,  and  did  not  re- 
collect the  purport  of  tlie  last  lines. 

I  should  have  seen  Rice  ere  this,  but  I  am  confined  by  Saw- 
ney's mandate  in  the  house  now,  and  have,  as  yet,  only  gone  out 
in  fear  of  the  damp  night.  I  shall  soon  be  quite  recovered. 
Your  offer  I  shall  remember  as  though  it  had  even  now  taken 
place  in  fact.  I  think  it  cannot  be.  Tom  is  not  up  yet — I  can- 
not  say  he  is  better.     I  have  not  heard  from  George. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


It  may  be  as  well  at  once  to  state  that  the  lady  alluded  to  in 
the  above  pages  inspired  Keats  with  tlie  passion  that  only  ceased 
with  his  existence.  Where  personal  feelings  of  so  profound  a 
character  are  concerned,  it  does  not  become  the  biographer,  in  any 
case,  to  do  more  than  to  indicate  their  effect  on  the  life  of  his 
hero,  and  where  the  memoir  so  nearly  approaches  the  times  of  its 
subject  that  the  persons  in  question,  or,  at  any  rate,  their  near  re- 
lations, may  be  still  alive,  it  will  at  once  be  felt  how  indecorous 
would  be  any  conjectural  analysis  of  such  sentiments,  or,  indeed, 
any  more  intrusive  record  of  them  than  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  the  comprehension  of  the  real  man.  True,  a  poet's  love  is, 
above  all  other  things,  his  life  ;  true,  a  nature,  such  as  that  of 
Keats,  in  which  the  sensuous  and  the  ideal  were  so  interpenetrated 
that  he  might  be  said  to  think  because  he  felt,  cannot  be  under- 
stood without  its  affections  ;  but  no  comment,  least  of  all  that  of 
one  personally  a  stranger,  can  add  to  the  force  of  the  glowing 
and  solemn  expressions  that  appear  here  and  there  in  his  corre- 

Comme  vu  tresor  cherement  sous  ces  allies, 
EUe  eniichit  les  Graces  immortelles 
De  son  bel  oeil  qui  les  Dieux  esmouuoit. — 
Du  Ciel  a,  peine  elle  estoit  descenduo 
Quand  ie  la  vey,  quand  mon  asme  esperduC 
En  deuint  foUe,  et  d'vn  si  poignant  trait, 
Amour  couler  ses  beautez  en  mes  veines, 
Qu'  autres  plaisirs  ie  ne  sens  que  mes  peines, 
Ny  autre  bien  qu'  adorer  son  portrait." 


JOHN  KEATS.  163 


spondence.  However  sincerely  the  devotion  of  Keats  may  liavc 
been  requited,  it  will  be  seen  that  his  outward  circumstances  soon 
became  such  as  to  render  a  union  very  difficult,  if  not  impossible. 
Thus  these  yeai's  were  passed  in  a  conflict  in  which  plain  poverty 
and  mortal  sickness  met  a  radiant  imagination  and  a  redundant 
heart.  Hope  was  there,  with  Genius,  his  everlasting  sustainer, 
and  Fear  never  approached  but  as  the  companion  of  Necessity. 
The  strong  power  conquered  the  physical  man,  and  made  the  very 
intensity  of  his  passion,  in  a  certain  sense,  accessory  to  his  death  : 
he  might  have  lived  longer  if  he  had  lived  less.  But  this  should 
be  no  matter  of  self-reproach  to  the  object  of  his  love,  for  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  very  exercise  of  his  poetic  faculty,  and 
of  all  that  made  him  what  he  was.  It  is  enough  that  she  has 
preserved  his  memory  with  a  sacred  honor,  and  it  is  no  vain  as- 
sumption, that  to  have  inspired  and  sustained  the  one  passion  of 
this  noble  being  has  been  a  source  of  grave  delight  and  earnest 
thankfulness,  through  the  changes  and  chances  of  her  earthly  pil- 
grimage. 

When  Keats  was  left  alone  by  his  brother's  death,  which  took 
place  early  in  December,  Mr.  Brown  pressed  on  him  to  leave  his 
lodgings  and  reside  entirely  in  his  house  :  this  he  consented  to, 
and  the  cheerful  society  of  his  friend  seemed  to  bring  back  his 
spirits,  and  at  the  same  time  to  excite  him  to  fresh  poetical  exertions. 
It  was  then  he  began  "  Hyperion ;"  that  poem  full  of  the  "  large 
utterance  of  the  early  Gods,"  of  which  Shelley  said,  that  the 
scenery  and  drawing  of  Saturn  dethroned  by  the  fallen  Titans 
supassed  those  of  Satan  and  his  rebellious  angels,  in  "  Paradise 
Lost."  He  afterwards  published  it  as  a  fragment,  and  still  later 
re-cast  it  into  tiie  shape  of  a  Vision,  which  remains  equally  unfm- 
ished.  Shorter  poems  were  scrawled,  as  they  happened  to  sug- 
gest themselves,  on  the  first  scrap  of  paper  at  hand,  which  was 
afterwards  used  as  a  mark  for  a  book,  or  thrown  any  where  aside. 
It  seemed  as  if,  when  his  imagination  was  once  relieved,  by  writ- 
ing down  its  effusions,  he  cared  so  little  about  them  that  it  re- 
quired a  friend  at  hand  to  prevent  them  from  being  utterly  lost. 
The  admirable  *•  Ode  to  a  Nightingale  "  was  suggested  by  the 
continual  song  of  the  bird  that,  in  tlie  spring  of  1819,  liad  built 
her  nest  close  to  the  liouse,  and  which  often   threw  Keats  into  a 


164  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

sort  of  trance  of  tranquil  pleasure.  One  morning  he  took  his 
chair  from  the  breakfast-table,  placed  it  upon  the  grass-plot  under 
a  plum-tree,  and  sat  there  for  two  or  three  hours  with  some  scraps 
of  paper  in  his  hands.  Shortly  afterwards,  Mr.  Brown  saw  him 
thrusting  them  away,  as  waste  paper,  behind  some  books,  and  had 
considerable  difficulty  in  putting  together  and  arranging  the 
stanzas  of  the  Ode.  Other  poems  as  literally  "  fugitive  "  were 
rescued  in  much  the  same  way — for  he  permitted  Mr.  Brown  to 
copy  whatever  he  could  pick  up,  and  sometimes  assisted  him. 

The  odes  "  To  the  Nightingale  "  and  "  To  a  Grecian  Urn  " 
were  first  published  in  a  periodical  entitled  the  "  Annals  of  Fine 
Arts."  Soon  after  he  had  composed  them,  he  repeated,  or  rather 
chanted,  them  to  Mr.  Haydon,  in  a  sort  of  recitative  that  so  well 
suited  his  deep  grave  voice,  as  they  strolled  together  through 
Kilburn  meadows,  leaving  an  indelible  impression  on  the  mind  of 
his  surviving  friend. 

The  journal-letters  to  his  brother  and  sister  in  America  are 
the  best  records  of  his  outer  existence.  I  give  them  in  their  sim- 
plicity, being  assured  that  thus  they  are  the  best.  They  are  full 
of  a  genial  life  which  will  be  understood  and  valued  by  all  to 
whom  a  book  of  this  nature  presents  any  interest  whatever :  and, 
when  it  is  remembered  how  carelessly  they  are  written,  how  little 
the  writer  ever  dreamt  of  their  being  redeemed  from  the  far  West 
or  exposed  to  any  other  eyes  than  those  of  the  most  familiar 
affection,  they  become  a  mirror  in  which  the  individual  character 
is  shown  with  indisputable  truth,  and  from  which  the  fairest 
judgment  of  his  very  self  can  be  drawn. 


[1818—19.] 
My  Dear  F>rother  and  Sister, 

You  will  have  been  prepared,  before  this  reaches  you, 
for  the  worst  news  you  could  have,  nay,  if  Haslam's  letter  arrived 
in  proper  time,  I  have  a  consolation  in  thinking  the  first  shock 
will  be  passed  before  you  receive  this.  The  last  days  of  poor 
Tom  were  of  the  most  distressing  nature ;  but  his  last  moments 
were  not  so  painful,  and  his  very  last  was  without  a  a  pang.  I 
will   not  enter  into  any  parsonic  comments   on  death.     Yet  the 


JOHN  KEATS.  165 


commonest  observations  of  the  commonest  people  on  death  are 
true  as  their  proverbs.  I  have  a  firm  belief  in  immortality,  and 
so  had  Tom. 

Durinjf  poor  Tom's  illness  I  Was  not  able  to  write,  and  since 
his  death  the  task  of  beginning  has  been  a  hinderance  to  me. 
Within  tliis  last  week  I  have  been  every  where,  and  I  will  tell 
you,  as  nearly  as  possible,  how  I  go  on.  I  am  going  to  domesti- 
cate with  Brown,  that  is,  we  shall  keep  house  togetlier.  I  shall 
have  the  front-parlor,  and  he  the  back  one,  by  which  I  shall  avoid 
the  noise  of  Bentley's  children,  and  be  able  to  go  on  with  my 
studies,  M'hich  have  been  greatly  interrupted  lately,  so  that  I  have 
not  the  siiadow  of  an  idea  of  a  book  in  my  head,  and  my  pen 
seems  to  have  grown  gouty  for  verse.  How  are  you  goino-  on 
now  ?  The  going  on  of  the  world  makes  me  dizzy.  There  you 
are  with  Birkbeck,  here  I  am  with  Brown  ;  sometimes  I  imagine 
an  immense  separation,  and  sometimes,  as  at  present,  a  direct 
communication  of  spirit  with  you.  That  will  be  one  of  the 
grandeurs  of  immortality.  There  will  be  no  space,  and  conse- 
quently the  only  commerce  between  spirits  will  be  by  their 
intelligence  of  each  other — when  they  will  completely  understand 
each  other,  while  we,  in  this  world,  merely  comprehend  each 
other  in  different  degrees;  the  higher  the  degree  of  good,  so 
higher  is  our  Love  and  Friendship.  I  have  been  so  little  used  to 
writing  lately  that  I  am  afraid  you  will  not  smoke  my  meanino-, 
so  I  will  give  you  an  example.  Suppose  Brown,  or  Haslam,  or 
any  one  else,  whom  I  understand  in  tlio  next  degree  to  what  I  do 
you,  were  in  America,  they  would  be  so  much  the  further  from 
me  in  proportion  as  their  identity  was  more  impressed  upon  me. 
Now  the  reason  why  I  do  not  feel,  at  the  present  moment,  so  far 
from  you,  is  that  I  remember  your  ways,  and  manners,  and 
actions  ;  I  know  your  manner  of  thinking,  your  manner  of  feelino- ; 
I  know  what  shape  your  joy  or  your  sorrow  would  take  ;  I  know 
the  manner  of  your  walking,  standing,  sauntering,  silting  down, 
laughing,  punning,  and  every  action,  so  truly  that  you  seem  near 
to  me.  You  will  remember  me  in  the  same  manner,  and  the 
more  when  I  tell  you  that  I  shall  read  a  page  of  Shakspeare  every 
Sunday  at  ten  o'clock  ;  you   read  one  at  the  same  time,  and  we 


166  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

shall  be  as  near  each  other  as  blind   bodies  can  be  in  the  same 
room. 

Thursday. — This  morning  is  very  fine.  What  are  you  doing 
this  morning  ?  Have  you  a  clear  hard  frost,  as  we  have  1  How 
do  you  come  on  with  the  gun  ?  Have  you  shot  a  Buffalo  ?  Have 
you  met  with  any  Pheasants  ?  My  thoughts  are  very  frequently 
in  a  foreign  country.  I  live  more  out  of  England  than  in  it.  The 
mountains  of  Tartary  are  a  favorite  lounge,  if  I  happen  to  miss 
the  Alleghany  ridge,  or  have  no  whim  for  Savoy.  There  must 
be  great  pleasure  in  pursuing  game — pointing  your  gun — no,  it 
won't  do — now — no — rabljit  it — now,  bang — smoke  and  feathers — 
where  is  it  ?  Shall  you  be  able  to  get  a  good  pointer  or  so  ? 
Now  I  am  not  addressing  myself  to  G.  Minor — and  yet  I  am,  for 
you  are  one.  Have  you  some  warm  furs  ?  By  your  next  letter 
I  shall  expect  to  hear  exactly  how  you  get  on  ;  smother  nothing ; 
let  us  have  all — fair  and  foul — all  plain.  Will  the  little  bairn 
have  made  his  entrance  before  you  have  this?  Kiss  it  for  me, 
and  when  it  can  first  know  a  cheese  from  a  caterpillar  show  it  my 
picture  twice  a  week.  You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  GifliDrd's 
attack  upon  me  has  done  me  service — it  has  got  my  book  among 
several  sets,  nor  must  I  forget  to  mention,  once  more,  what  1  sup- 
pose Haslam  has  told  you,  the  present  of  a  25/.  note  I  had  anony- 
mously sent  me.  Another  pleasing  circumstance  I  may  mention, 
on  the  authority  of  Mr.  Neville,  to  whom  I  had  sent  a  copy  of 
"  Endymion."  It  was  lying  on  his  cousin's  table,  where  it  had 
been  seen  by  one  of  the  Misses  Porter,  (of  Romance  celebrity,) 
who  expressed  a  wish  to  read  it ;  after  liaving  dipped  into  it,  in 
a  day  or  two  she  returned  it,  accompanied  by  the  following  let- 
ter ; — 

"  Dear  Sir, 

"  As  my  brother  is  sending  a  messenger  to  Esher,  I 
cannot  but  make  the  same  the  bearer  of  my  regrets  for  not  hav- 
ing had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  the  morning  you  called  at  the 
gate.  I  had  given  orders  to  be  denied,  I  was  so  very  unwell  with 
my  still  adhesive  cold  ;  hut  had  I  known  it  was  you,  I  should 
have  broken  off  the  interdict  for  a  few  minutes,  to  say  liow  very 
much  I  am  delighted  with  '  Endymion.'     1  had  just  finished  the 


JOHN  KEATS.  167 


poem,  and  liavc  now  done  as  you  permitted,  lent  it  to  Miss  Fitz- 
gerald. 

"  I  regret  you  are  not  personally  acquainted  with  the  author, 
for  I  should  have  been  happy  to  have  acknowledged  to  him, 
through  tiie  advantage  of  your  communication,  the  very  rare  de- 
light my  sister  and  myself  have  enjoyed  from  this  first  fruits  of 
his  genius.  I  hope  the  ill-natured  review  will  not  have  damped 
such  true  Parnassian  fire.  It  ought  not,  for  when  life  is  granted 
to  the  possessor,  it  always  burns  its  brilliant  way  through  every 
obstacle.  Had  Chatterton  possessed  sufficient  manliness  of  mind 
to  know  the  magnanimity  of  patience,  and  been  aware  that  great 
talents  have  a  commission  from  heaven,  he  would  not  have  de- 
serted his  post,  and  his  name  might  have  paged  with  Milton. 

"  Ever  much  yours, 

"  Jane  Porter." 
"  Ditton  Cottage,  Dec.  4, 1818.  , 

"  To  H.  Neville,  Esq.,  Esher." 

Now  I  feel  more  obliged  than  flattered  by  this — so  obliged  that 
I  will  not,  at  present,  give  you  an  extravaganza  of  a  Lady  Ro- 
mance. I  will  be  introduced  to  them  first,  if  it  be  merely  for  the 
pleasure  of  writing  you  about  them.  Hunt  has  asked  me  to 
meet  Tom  Moore,  so  you  shall  hear  of  him  also  some  day. 

I  am  passing  a  quiet  day,  which  I  have  not  done  for  a  long 
time,  and  if  I  do  continue  so,  I  feel  1  must  again  begin  with  my 
poetry,  for  if  I  am  not  in  action,  mind  or  body,  I  am  in  pain,  and 
from  that  I  suffer  greatly  by  going  into  parties,  when  from  the 
rules  of  society  and  a  natural  pride,  I  am  obliged  to  smother  my 
spirits  and  look  like  an  idiot,  because  I  feel  my  impulses,  if  given 
way  to,  would  too  much  amaze  them.  I  live  under  an  everlast- 
ing restraint,  never  relieved  except  when  I  am  composing,  so  1 
will  write  away. 

Friday. — I  think  you  knew  before  you  left  England,  that  my 
next  subject  would  be  the  "  Fall  of  Hyperion."  I  went  on  a  little 
whh  it  last  night,  but  it  will  take  some  time  to  get  into  the  vein 
again.  I  will  not  give  you  any  extracts,  because  I  wish  the  whole 
to  make  an  impression.  I  have,  however,  a  few  poems  which 
you  will  like,  and  I  will  copy  them  out  on  the  next  sheet.     I  will 


168  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

write  to  Haslam  this  morning  to  know  when  the  packet  sails,  and 
till  it  does  I  will  write  something  every  day.  After  that  my  jour- 
nal shall  go  on  like  clockwork,  and  you  must  not  complain  of  its 
dullness  ;  for  what  I  wish  is  to  write  a  quantity  to  you,  knowing 
well  that  dullness  itself  from  me  will  be  instructing  to  you.  You 
may  conceive  how  this  not  having  been  done  has  weighed  upon 
me.  I  shall  be  better  able  to  judge  from  your  next  what  sort  of 
information  will  be  of  most  service  or  amusement  to  you.  Per- 
haps, as  you  are  fond  of  giving  me  sketches  of  characters,  you 
may    like    a   little  pic-nic  of  scandal,  even  across  the  Atlantic. 

Shall  I    give  you   Miss ?     She  is   about    my    height,  with 

a  fine  style  of  countenance  of  the  lengthened  sort ;  she  wants 
sentiment  in  every  feature  ;  she  manages  to  make  her  hair 
look  well ;  her  nostrils  are  very  fine,  though  a  little  pain- 
ful ;  her  mouth  is  bad  and  good  ;  her  profile  is  better  than  her 
full  face,  which,  indeed,  is  not  full,  but  pale  and  thin,  without 
showing  any  bone ;  her  shape  is  very  graceful,  and  so  are  her 
movements ;  her  arms  are  good,  her  hands  bad-ish,  her  feet 
tolerable.  She  is  not  seventeen,  but  she  is  ignorant ;  monstrous 
in  her  behavior,  flying  out  in  all  directions,  calling  people  such 
names  that  I  was  forced  lately  to  make  use  of  the  term — Minx : 
this  is,  I  think,  from  no  innate  vice,  but  from  a  penchant  she  has 
for  acting  stylishly.  I  am,  however,  tired  of  such  style,  and  shall 
decline  any  more  of  it.  She  had  a  friend  to  visit  her  lately;  you 
have  known  plenty  such — she  plays  the  music,  but  without  one 
sensation  but  the  feel  of  the  ivory  at  her  fingers ;  she  is  a  down- 
right Miss,  without  one  set-ofl\     We  hated  her,  and  smoked  her, 

and  baited  her,  and,  I  think,  drove  her  away.     Miss thinks 

her  a  paragon  of  fashion,  and  says  she  is  the  only  woman  in  the 
world  she  would  change  persons  with.  What  a  stupe — she  is  as 
superior  as  a  rose  to  a  dandelion. 

It  is  some  days  since  I  wrote  the  last  page,  but  I  never  know; 
but  1  must  write.  I  am  looking  into  a  book  of  Dubois' — he  has 
written  directions  to  the  players.  One  of  them  is  very  good  :  "  In 
singing,  never  mind  the  music — observe  what  time  you  please. 
It  would  be  a  pretty  degradation,  indeed,  if  you  were  obliged  to 
confine  your  genius  to  the  dull  regularity  of  a  fiddler — horse-hair 
and  cat-guts.     No,  let  him  keep  your  time  and  play  your  time ; 


JOHN  KEATS.  169 


dorlge  hhn.''  I  will  now  copy  out  tho  sonnet  and  letter  I  have 
spoken  of.  The  outside  cover  was  thus  directed,  "  Messrs.  Tay- 
lor and  Hessey,  Booksellers,  93  Fleet-street,  London,"  and  it 
contained  this:  "Messrs.  Taylor  and  Hessey  are  requested  to 
forward  the  enclosed  letter,  by  some  safo  mode  of  conveyance,  to 
the  author  of  '  Endymion,'  who  is  not  known  at  Teignmouth  ;  or, 
if  they  have  not  his  address,  they  will  return  the  letter  by  post, 
directed  as  below,  within  a  fortnight.  Mr.  P.  Fenbank,  P.  O., 
Teignmouth,  9fh  November,  1818."  In  this  sheet  was  enclosed 
the  following,  with  a  superscription,  "  Mr.  John  Keats,  Teign- 
mouth ;"  then  came  "Sonnet  to  John  Keats,"  which  1  could  not 
copy  for  any  in  the  world  but  you,  who  know  that  I  scout  "  mild 
light  and  loveliness,"  or  any  such  nonsense,  in  myself. 

■■'  Star  of  high  promise  I  Not  to  this  dark  age 
Do  thy  mild  light  and  loveliness  belong; 
For  it  is  blind,  intolerant,  and  wrong, 
Dead  to  empyreal  soarings,  and  the  rage 
Of  scoffing  spirits  bitter  war  doth  wage 
With  all  that  bold  integrity  of  song  ; 
Yet  thy  clear  beam  shall  shine  through  ages  strong, 
To  ripest  times  a  light  and  heritage. 
And  those  breathe  now  who  dote  upon  thy  fame, 
Whom  thy  wild  numbers  wrap  beyond  their  being. 
Who  love  the  freedom  of  thy  lays,  their  aim 
Above  the  scope  of  a  dull  tribe  unseeing. 
And  there  is  one  whose  hand  will  never  scant. 
From  his  poor  store  of  fruits,  all  thou  canst  want. 

(Turn  over.)" 

I  turned  over,  and  found  a  £25  note.  Now  this  appears  to 
me  all  very  proper;  if  I  had  refused  it,  I  should  have  behaved  in 
a  very  braggadocio  dunder-headed  maimer  ;  and  yet  the  present 
galls  me  a  little,  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  not  return  it,  if  I  ever 
meet  with    the  donor,  after  whom   to  no  purpose  have  I  written. 

I  must  not  forget  to  tell  you,  that  a  few  days  since  I  went  with 
Dilke  a-shooting  on  the  heath,  and  shot  a  tomtit  ;  there  were  as 
many  guns  abroad  as  birds. 

Thursday. — On  my  word,  I  think  so  little,  I  have  not  one 
opinion  upon  any  thing  except  in  matters  of  taste.     I  never  can 


170  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

feel  certain  of  any  truth,  but  from  a  clear  perception  of  its  beaut}'', 
and  I  find  myself  very  young-minded,  even  in  that  perceptive 
power,  which  I  hope  will  increase.  A  year  ago  I  could  not  un- 
derstand, in  the  slightest  degree,  Raphael's  Cartoons;  now  I  be- 
gin to  read  them  a  little.  And  how  did  I  learn  to  do  so?  By 
seeing  something  done  in  quite  an  opposite  spirit ;  I  mean  a  pic- 
lure  of  Guido's,  in  which  all  the  Saints,  instead  of  that  heroic 
simplicity  and  unaffected  grandeur,  which  they  inherit  from 
Raphael,  had,  each  of  them,  both  in  countenance  and  gesture,  all 
the  canting,  solemn,  melo-dramatic  mawkishness  of  Mackenzie's 
Father  Nicholas.  When  1  was  last  at  Haydon's,  I  looked  over  a 
book  of  prints,  taken  from  the  fresco  of  the  church  at  Milan,  the 
name  of  which  I  forget.  In  it  were  comprised  specimens  of  the 
first  and  second  age  in  Art  in  Italy.  I  do  not  think  I  ever  had  a 
greater  treat,  out  of  Shakspeare  ;  full  of  romance  and  the  most 
tender  feeling ;  magnificence  of  drapery  beyond  every  thing  I 
ever  saw,  not  excepting  Raphael's, — but  grotesque  to  a  curious 
pitch  ;  yet  still  making  up  a  fine  whole,  even  finer  to  me  than 
more  accomplished  works,  as  there  was  left  so  much  room  for 
imagination.  I  have  not  heard  one  of  this  last  course  of  Hazlitt's 
Lectures.  They  were  upon  Wit  and  Humor,  tiie  English  Comic 
Writers,  &c. 

I  do  not  tliink  I  have  any  thing  to  say  in  the  business-way. 
You  will  let  nie  know  what  you  would  wish  done  with  your  pro- 
perty in  England — what  things  you  would  wish  sent  out.  But  I 
am  quite  in  the  dark  even  as  to  your  arrival  in  America.  Your 
first  letter  will  be  the  key  by  which  I  shall  open  your  hearts  and 
see  what  spaces  want  filling  with  any  particular  information. 
Whether  the  affairs  of  Europe  are  more  or  less  interesting  to  you  ; 
whether  you  would  like  to  hear  of  the  Theatres,  the  Bear  Garden, 
tlie  Boxers,  the  Painters,  the  Lecturers,  the  Dress,  the  progress  of 

Dandyism,  the  progress  of  Courtship,  or  the  fate  of  Mary  M , 

being  a  full,  true,  and  trcs  particular  account  of  Miss  Mary's  ten 
suitors ;  how  the  first  tried  the  effect  of  swearing,  the  second  of 
stammering,  the  third  of  whispering,  the  fourth  of  sonnets,  the 
fifth  of  Spanish-leather  boots,  the  sixth  of  fiattering  her  body,  the 
seventh  of  flattering  her  mind,  the  eighth  of  flattering  himself,  the 
ninth  of  sticking  to  the  mother,  the  tenth  of  kissing  the  chamber- 


JOHN  KEATS.  171 


maid   and  bidding  her  tell  her  mistress — but   he  was  soon  dis- 
charged. 

And  now,  for  tlie  time,  I  bid  you  good-bye. 

Your  most  utrectionate  Brother, 

John. 

Fehruary  14,  [1829.] 
My  Dear  Bkother  and  Sister, 

How  is  it  that  we  have  not  heard  from  you  at  the  Set- 
tlement ?  Surely  the  letters  have  miscarried.  I  am  still  at 
Wentworth  Place ;  indeed,  I  have  kept  in  doors  lately,  resolved, 
if  possible,  to  rid  myself  of  my  sore  throat ;  consequently  I  have 
not  been  to  see  your  mother  since  my  return  from  Chichester. 
Nothing  worth  speaking  of  happened  at  either  place.  I  took 
down  some  of  the  thin  paper,  and  wrote  on  it  a  little  poem  called 
'•  St.  Agnes'  Eve,"  which  you  will  have  as  it  is,  when  I  have 
finished  the  blank  part  of  the  rest  for  you.  1  went  out  twice,  at 
Chichester,  to  old  dowager  card-parties.  I  see  very  little  now, 
and  very  few  persons, — being  almost  tired  of  men  and  things. 
Brown  and  Dilke  are  very  kind  and  considerate  towards  me. 
Another  satire  is  expected  from  Lord  Byron,  called  "  Don  Gio- 
vanni," Yesterday  I  went  to  town  for  the  first  time  these  three 
weeks.  I  met  people  from  all  parts  and  of  all  sects.  Mr.  Wood- 
iiouse  was  looking  up  at  a  book-window  in  Newgate-street,  and, 
being  short  sighted,  twisted  his  muscles  into  so  queer  a  style,  that 
1  stood  by,  in  doubt  whether  it  was  him  or  his  brother,  if  he  has 
one  ;  and,  turning  round,  saw  Mr.  Hazlitt,  with  his  son.  Wood- 
hcuse  proved  to  be  Woodhouse,  and  not  his  brothei",  on  his  features 
subsiding.  I  have  had  a  little  business  with  Mr.  Abbey ;  from 
time  to  time  he  has  behaved  to  me  with  a  little  hrnsquerie  ;  this 
hurt  me  a  little,  especially  when  I  knew  him  to  be  the  only  man 
in  England  who  dared  to  say  a  thing  to  me  I  did  not  approve  of, 
without  its  being  resented,  or,  at  least,  noticed ; — so  I  wrote  him 
about  it,  and  have  made  an  alteration  in  my  favor.  I  expect  from 
this  to  see  more  of  Fanny,  who  has  been  quite  shut  up  from  me. 
I  see  Cobbett  has  been  attacking  the  Settlement ;  but  1  cannot  tell 
what  to  believe,  and  shall  be  all  at  elbows  till  I  hear  from  you. 
Mrs.  S.  met  me  the  other  day.     I  heard  she  said  a  thing  I  am  not 


172  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

at  all  contented  with.     Says  she,   "  O,  he  is  quite  the  little  poet." 

Now  this  is  abominable  ;   you  might  as  well  say  Bonaparte  is 

"  quite  the  little  soldier."     You  see  what  it  is  to  be  under  six  feet, 

and  not  a  Lord. 

******* 

In  my  next  packet  1  shall  send  you  my  "  Pot  of  Basil,"  "  St. 
Agnes'  Eve,"  and,  if  I  should  have  finished  it,  a  little  thing,  called 
the  "  Eve  of  St.  Mark."  You  see  what  fine  Mother  Radcliffe 
names  I  have.  It  is  not  my  fault;  1  did  not  search  for  them.  I 
have  not  gone  on  with  "Hyperion,"  for,  to  tell  the  truth,  I  have 
not  been  in  great  cue  for  writing  lately.  I  must  wait  for  the 
spring  to  rouse  me  a  little. 

Friday,  I8th  February. — The  day  before  yesterday  I  went  to 
Romney-street ;  your  mother  was  not  at  home.  We  lead  very 
quiet  lives  here  ;  Dilke  is,  at  present,  at  Greek  history  and  anti- 
quities;  and  talks  of  nothing  but  the  Elections  of  Westminster 
and  the  Retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand.  I  never  drink  above  three 
glasses  of  wine,  and  never  any  spirits  and  water;  tliough,  by  the 
by,  the  other  day  Woodhouse  took  me  to  his  cofFee-house,  and 
ordered  a  bottle  of  claret.  How  I  like  claret !  when  I  can  get 
claret,  I  must  drink  it.  'Tis  the  only  palate  atTair  that  I  am  at  all 
sensual  in.  Would  it  not  be  a  good  spec,  to  send  you  some  vine- 
roots  ?  Could  it  be  done  ?  I'll  inquire.  If  you  could  make  some 
wine  like  claret,  to  drink"on  summer  evenings  in  an  arbor!  It 
fills  one's  mouth  with  a  gushing  freshness,  then  goes  down  cool 
and  feverless :  then,  you  do  not  feel  it  quarreling  with  one's  liver. 
No ;  'tis  rather  a  peace-maker,  and  lies  as  quiet  as  it  did  in  the 
grape.  Then  it  is  as  fragrant  as  the  Queen  Bee,  and  the  more 
ethereal  part  mounts  into  the  brain,  not  assaulting  the  cerebral 
apartments,  like  a  bully  looking  for  his  trull,  and  hurrying  from 
door  to  door,  bouncing  against  the  wainscot,  but  rather  walks 
like  Aladdin  about  his  enchanted  palace,  so  gently  that  you 
do  not  feel  his  step.  Other  wines  of  a  heavy  and  spirituous 
nature  transform  a  man  into  a  Silcnus,  this  makes  him  a  Hermes, 
and  gives  a  womtm  the  soul  and  immortality  of  an  Ariadne,  for 
whom  Bacchus  always  kept  a  good  cellar  of  claret,  and  even  of 
that  he  never  could  persuade  her  to  take  above  two  cups.  I  said 
this  s.ime  claret  is  the  only  palate-passion  I  have  ;  I  forgot  game  ; 


JOHN  KEATS.  173 


I  must  plead  guilty  to  the  breast  of  a  patridge,  the  back  of  a  hare, 
the  back-bone  of  a  grouse,  the  wing  and  side  of  a  pheasant,  and  a 
woodcock  passim.  Talking  of  game  (I  wish  I  could  make  it), 
the  lady  whom  I  met  at  Hastings,  and  of  whom  I  wrote  you,  I 
think,  has  lately  sent  me  many  presents  of  game,  and  enabled  me 
to  make  as  many.  She  made  me  take  home  a  pheasant  the  other 
day,  which  I  gave  to  Mrs.  Dilke.  The  ne.xt  I  intend  for  your 
mother.  I  have  not  said  in  any  letter  a  word  about  my  own 
affairs.  In  a  word,  I  am  in  no  despair  about  them.  My  poem 
has  not  at  all  succeeded.  In  the  course  of  a  year  or  so  I  think  I 
shall  try  the  public  again.  In  a  selfish  point  of  view  I  should 
suffer  my  pride  and  my  contempt  of  public  opinion  to  hold  me 
silent;  but  for  yours  and  Fanny's  sake,  I  will  pluck  up  spirit  and 
try  it  again.  I  have  no  doubt  of  success  in  a  course  of  years,  if 
I  persevere;  but  I  must  be  patient:  for  the  reviewers  have  ener- 
vated men's  minds,  and  made  them  indolent ;  few  think  for  them- 
selves. These  reviews  are  getting  more  and  more  powerful, 
especially  the  "  Quarterly."  They  are  like  a  superstition,  which, 
the  more  it  prostrates  the  crowd,  and  the  longer  it  continues,  the 
more  it  becomes  powerful,  just  in  proportion  to  their  increasing 
weakness.  I  was  in  hopes  that,  as  people  saw,  as  they  must  do 
now,  all  the  trickery  and  iniquity  of  these  plagues,  they  would 
scout  them  ;  but  no  ;  they  are  like  the  spectators  at  the  Westmin- 
ster cock-pit,  they  like  the  battle,  and  do  not  care  who  wins  or 
who  loses. 

On  Monday  we  had  to  dinner  Severn  and  Cawthorn,  the  book- 
seller and  print-virtuoso  ;  in  the  evening  Severn  went  home  to 
paint,  and  we  other  three  went  to  the  play,  to  see  Shell's  new 
tragedy  yclcped  "  Evadne."  In  the  morning  Severn  and  I  took 
a  turn  round  the  Museum  ;  there  is  a  sphin.x  there  of  a  giant 
size,  and  most  voluptuous  Egyptian  expression  ;  I  had  not  seen 
it  before.  The  play  was  bad,  even  in  comparison  with  1818, 
the  "Augustan  age  of  the  drama."  The  whole  was  made  up 
of  a  virtuous  young  woman,  an  indignant  brother,  a  suspecting 
lover,  a  libertine  prince,  a  gratuitous  villain,  a  street  in  Naples, 
a  cypress  grove,  lilies  and  roses,  virtue  and  vice,  a  bloody  sword, 
a  spangled  jacket,  one  "  Lady  Olivia,"  one  Miss  O'Neil,  alias 
"Evadne,"  alias  "  Bcllamira."     The  play  is  a  fine  amusement. 


174  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


as  a  friend  of  mine  once  said  to  me  :  "  Do  what  you  will,"  says 
he,  "  a  poor  gentleman  who  wants  a  guinea  cannot  spend  his  two 
shillings  better  than  at  the  playhouse."  The  pantomime  was 
excellent ;  I  had  scon  it  before,  and  enjoyed  it  again. 

Your  mother  and  I  had  some  talk  about   Miss .     Says  I, 

"  Will   Henry  have  that  Miss ,  a  lath   with  a  boddice,  she 

who  has  been  fine-drawn, — fit  for  nothing  but  to  cut  up  into  crib- 
bage-pins  ;  one  who  is  all  muslin  ;  all  feathers  and  bone  ?  Once, 
in  traveling,  she  was  made  use  of  as  a  linch-pin.  I  hope  he 
will  not  have  her,  though  it  is  no  uncommon  thing  to  be  smitten 
with  a  staff ; — though  she  might  be  useful  as  his  walking-stick, 
his  fishing-rod,  his  tooth-pick,  his  hat-stick  (she  runs  so  much  in 
his  head).  Let  him  turn  farmei",  she  would  cut  into  hurdles; 
let  him  write  poetry,  she  would  be  his  turn-style.  Her  gown  is 
like  a  flag  on  a  pole  :  she  would  do  for  him  if  he  turn  freemason; 
I  hope  she  will  prove  a  flag  of  truce.  When  she  sits  languish- 
ing, with  her  one  foot  on  a  stool,  and  one  elbow  one  the  table, 
and  her  head  inclined,  she  looks  like  the  sign  of  the  Crooked 
Billet,  or  the  frontispiece  to  '  Cinderella,'  or  a  tea-paper  wood- 
cut of  Mother  Shipton  at  her  studies." 

The  nothing  of  the  day  is  a  machine  called  the  "  Veloci- 
pede." It  is  a  wheel-carriage  to  ride  cock-horse  upon,  sitting 
astride  and  pushing  it  along  with  the  toes,  a  rudder-wheel  in 
hand.  They  will  go  seven  miles  an  hour.  A  handsome  geld- 
ing will  come  to  eight  guineas  ;  however,  they  will  soon  be 
cheaper,  unless  the  army  takes  to  them. 

I  look  back  upon  the  last  month,  and  find  nothing  to  write 
about ;  indeed,  I  do  not  recollect  one  thing  particular  in  it.  It's 
all  alike  ;  we  keep  on  breathing ;  the  only  amusement  is  a  little 
scandal,  of  however  fine  a  shape,  a  laugh  at  a  pun, — and  then, 
after  all,  we  wonder  how  we  could  enjoy  the  scandal,  or  laugh 
at  the  pun. 

I  have  been,  at  difierent  times,  turning  it  in  my  head,  wheth- 
er I  should  go  to  Edinburgh,  and  study  for  a  physician.  I  am 
afraid  I  should  not  take  kindly  to  it ;  I  am  sure  I  could  not  take 
fees  :  and  yet  I  should  like  to  do  so;  it  is  not  worse  than  writing 
poems,  and  hanging  them  up  to  be  fly-blown  on  the  Review 
shambles.     Every  body  is  in  his  own  mess :  here  is  the  Parson 


JOHN  KEATS.  175 


at  Hampstead  quarreling  with  all  the  world  ;  he  is  in  the  wrong 
by  this  same  token  ;  when  the  black  cloth  was  put  up  in  the  church, 
for  the  Queen's  mourning,  he  asked  the  workmen  to  hang  it  wrong 
side  outwards,  that  it  might  be  better  when  taken  down,  it  being  his 
perquisite. 

Friday,  Idth  March. — This  morning  I  have  been  reading 
"  The  False  One."  Shameful  to  say,  I  was  in  bed  at  ten — I 
mean,  this  morning.  The  "  Blackwood's  Reviewers"  have  com- 
mitted themselves  to  a  scandalous  heresy  ;  they  have  been  put- 
ting up  Hogg,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  against  Burns:  the  sense- 
less villains  !  The  Scotch  cannot  manage  themselves  at  all,  they 
want  imagination ;  and  that  is  why  they  are  so  fond  of  Hogg, 
who  has  so  little  of  it.  This  morning  I  am  in  a  sort  of  temper, 
indolent  and  supremely  careless  ;  I  long  after  a  stanza  or  two 
of  Thomson's  "  Castle  of  Indolence ;"  my  passions  are  all 
asleep,  from  my  having  slumbered  till  nearly  eleven,  and  v/eak- 
ened  the  animal  fibre  all  over  me,  to  a  delightful  sensation,  about 
three  degrees  on  this  side  of  faintness.  If  I  had  teeth  of  pearl, 
and  the  breath  of  lilies,  I  should  call  it  languor  ;  but,  as  I  am,  I 
must  call  it  laziness.  In  this  state  of  effeminacy,  the  fibres  of  the 
brain  are  relaxed,  in  common  with  tlie  rest  of  the  body,  and  to 
such  a  happy  degree,  that  pleasure  has  no  show  of  enticement, 
and  pain  no  unbearable  frown  ;  neither  Poetry,  nor  Ambition,  nor 
Love,  have  any  alertness  of  countenance  ;  as  they  pass  by  me, 
they  seem  rather  like  thi'ee  figures  on  a  Greek  vase,  two  men 
and  a  woman,  wliom  no  one  but  myself  could  distinguish  in  their 
disguisenient.  This  is  the  only  happiness,  rnd  is  a  rare  instance 
of  advantage  in  the  body  overpowering  the  mind. 

I  have  this  moment  received  a  note  from  Haslam,  in  which  lie 
writes  that  he  expects  the  death  of  his  father,  who  has  been  for 
some  time  in  a  state  of  insensibility  ;  I  shall  go  to  town  to-mor- 
row to  see  him.  This  is  the  world  ;  thus  we  cannot  expect  to 
give  away  many  hours  to  pleasure  ;  circumstances  are  like  clouds, 
continually  gathering  and  bursting;  wliile  we  are  laughing,  the 
seed  of  trouble  is  put  into  the  wide  arable  land  of  events;  while 
we  are  laughing,  it  sprouts,  it  grows,  and  suddenly  bears  a  poi- 
sonous fruit,  which  we  must  pluck.  Even  so  we  have  leisure  to 
reason  on  the  misfortunes  of  our   friends:  our  own   touch   us  too 


176  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

nearly  for  words.  Very  few  men  have  ever  arrived  at  a  com- 
plete disinterestedness  of  mind  ;  very  few  have  hecn  interested  by 
a  pure  desire  of  the  benefit  of  others :  in  the  greater  part  of  the 
benefactors  of  humanity,  some  meretricious  motive  has  sullied 
their  greatness,  some  melo-dramatic  scenery  has  fascinated  them. 
From  the  manner  in  which  I  feel  Flaslam's  misfortune  I  perceive 
how  far  I  am  from  any  humble  standard  of  disinterestedness  ;  yet 
this  feeling  ought  to  be  carried  to  its  highest  pitch,  as  there  is  no 
fear  of  its  ever  injuring  society-  In  wild  nature,  tlie  Hawk  would 
lose  his  breakfast  of  robins,  and  the  Robin  his  worms ;  the  Lion 
must  starve  as  well  as  the  Swallow.  The  great  part  of  men  sway 
their  way  with  the  same  instinctiveness,  the  same  unwandering 
eye  from  their  purposes,  the  same  anirrial  eagerness,  as  the  Hawk  : 
the  Hawk  wants  a  mate,  so  does  the  Man  ;  look  at  them  both ; 
they  set  about  it,  and  procure  one  in  the  same  manner  ;  they  want 
both  a  nest,  and  they  both  set  about  one  in  the  same  manner. 
The  noble  animal,  Man,  for  his  amusement,  smokes  his  pipe,  the 
Hawk  balances  about  the  clouds :  that  is  the  only  difference  of 
their  leisures.  This  is  that  which  makes  the  amusement  of  life 
to  a  speculative  mind  ;  I  go  among  the  fields,  and  catch  a  glimpse 
of  a  stoat  or  a  field-mouse,  peeping  out  of  the  withered  grass ;  the 
creature  hath  a  purpose,  and  its  eyes  are  bright  with  it ;  I  go 
amongst  the  buildings  of  a  city,  and  I  see  a  man  hurrying  along — 
to  what  ? — the  creature  hath  a  purpose,  and  its  eyes  are  bright 
M'ith  it : — but  then,  as  Wordsworth  says,  "  We  have  all  one  hu- 
man heart !"  There  is  an  electric  fire  in  human  nature,  tending 
to  purify  ;  so  that,  among  these  human  creatures,  there  is  contin- 
ually some  birth  of  new  heroism  ;  the  pity  is,  that  we  must  won- 
der at  it,  as  we  should  at  finding  a  peai'l  in  rubbish.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  thousands  of  people,  never  heard  of,  have  had  hearts 
completely  disintei'ested.  I  can  remember  but  two,  Socrates  and 
Jesus.  Their  histories  evince  it.  What  I  heard  Taylor  observe 
with  respect  to  Socrates  is  true  of  Jesus  :  that,  though  he  trans- 
mitted no  writing  of  his  own  to  posterity,  we  have  his  mind,  and 
his  sayings,  and  his  greatness,  handed  down  to  us  by  others.  Even 
here,  though  I  am  pursuing  the  same  instinctive  course  as  the 
veriest  animal  you  can  think  of — I  am,  however,  young  and  writ- 
ing at  random,  straining  after  particles   of  light  in  the  midst  of  a 


JOHN  KEATS.  177 


great  darkness,  without  knowing  the  bearing  of  any  one  assertion, 
of  any  one  opinion — yet,  in  this  may  I  not  be  free  from  sin  ? 
May  there  not  be  superior  beings,  amused  with  any  graceful, 
though  instinctive,  attitude  my  mind  may  fail  into,  as  I  am  enter- 
tained with  the  alertness  of  the  stoat,  or  the  anxiety  of  the  deer  ? 
Though  a  quarrel  in  the  street  is  a  thing  to  be  hated,  the  energies 
displayed  in  it  are  fine ;  the  commonest  man  shows  a  grace  in  his 
quarrel.  By  a  superior  Being  our  reasonings  may  take  the  same 
tone ;  though  erroneous,  they  may  be  fine.  This  is  the  very 
thing  in  which  consists  Poetry,  and  if  so,  it  is  not  so  fine  a  thing 
as  Philosophy,  for  the  same  reason  that  an  eagle  is  not  so  fine  a 
thing  as  truth.  Give  me  this  credit,  do  you  not  think  I  strive  to 
know  myself?  Give  me  this  credit,  and  you  will  not  think,  that 
on  my  own  account  I  repeat  the  lines  of  Milton  : — 

"  How  charming  is  divine  philosophy, 
Not  harsh  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose. 
But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute." 

No,  not  for  myself,  feeling  grateful,  as  I  do,  to  have  got  into  a 
state  of  mind  to  relish  them  properly.  Nothing  ever  becomes  real 
till  it  is  experienced ;  even  a  proverb  is  no  proverb  to  you  till  life 
has  illustrated  it. 

I  am  afraid  that  your  anxiety  for  me  leads  you  to  fear  for  the 
violence  of  my  temperament,  continually  smothered  down  :  for 
that  reason,  1  did  not  intend  to  have  sent  you  the  following  Sonnet ; 
but  look  over  the  two  last  pages,  and  ask  yourself  if  I  have  not 
that  in  me  which  will  bear  the  bufiets  of  the  world.  It  will  be 
the  best  comment  on  my  Sonnet ;  it  will  show  you  that  it  was 
written  with  no  agony  but  that  of  ignorance,  with  no  thirst  but 
that  of  knowledge,  when  pushed  to  the  point ;  though  the  first 
steps  to  it  were  through  my  human  passions,  they  went  away,  and 
I  wrote  with  my  mind,  and,  perhaps,  I  must  confess,  a  little  bit  of 
my  heart. 

"  Why  did  I  laugh  to-night  ?     No  voice  will  tell,"  &c.* 

I  went  to  bed  and  enjoyed  uninterrupted  sleep  :  sane  I  went 
to  bed,  and  sane  I  aro.se. 

*  See  the  "  Literary  Remains." 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


loth  April. — You  see  what  a  time  it  is  since  I  wrote ;  all  tliut 
time  I  have  been,  day  after  day,  expecting  letters  from  you.  I 
write  quite  in  the  dark.  In  hopes  of  a  letter  to-day  I  defei'red 
till  night,  that  I  might  write  in  the  light.  It  looks  so  much  like 
rain,  I  shall  not  go  to  town  to-day,  but  put  it  off  till  to-morrow. 
Brown,  this  morning,  is  writing  some  Spenserian  stanzas   against 

Miss  B and  me  :    so  I  shall  amuse  myself  with  him   a  little, 

in  the  manner  of  Spenser. 

"  He  is  to  weet  a  melancholy  carle  : 

Thin  in  the  waist,  with  bushy  head  of  hair. 

As  hath  the  seeded  thistle,  when  a  parle 

It  holds  with  Zephyr,  ere  it  sendeth  fair 

Its  light  balloons  into  the  summer  air  ; 

Thereto  his  beard  had  not  begun  to  bloom. 

No  brush  had  touched  his  chin,  or  razor  sheer ; 

No  care  had  touched  his  cheek  with  mortal  doom, 
But  new  he  was,  and  bright,  as  scarf  from  Persian  loom. 

"  Ne  cared  he  for  wine  or  half-and-half; 

Ne  cared  he  for  fish,  or  flesh,  or  fowl  ; 

And  sauces  held  he  worthless  as  the  chaff ; 

He  'sdeigned  the  swine-head  at  the  wassail-bowl  ; 

Ne  with  lewd  ribalds  sat  he  cheek  by  jowl  ; 

Ne  with  sly  lemans  in  the  scorner's  chair  ; 

But  after  water-brooks  this  pilgrim's  soul 

Panted,  and  all  his  food  was  woodland  air; 
Though  he  would  oft-times  feast  on  gilliflowers  rare. 

"  The  slang  of  cities  in  no  wise  he  knew. 

Tipping  the  wink  to  him  was  heathen  Greek  ; 

He  sipped  no  "  olden  Tom,"  or  "  ruin  blue," 

Or  Nantz,  or  cherry-brandy,  drank  full  meek 

By  many  a  damsel-brave,  and  rouge  of  cheek  ; 

Nor  did  he  know  each  aged  watchman's  beat. 

Nor  in  obscured  purlieus  would  he  seek 

For  curled  Jewesses,  with  ankles  neat. 
Who,  as  they  walk  abroad,  make  tinkling  with  their  feet." 

This  character  would  insure  him  a  situation  in  the  establishment 
of  the  patient  Griselda.  Brown  is  gone  to  bed,  and  I  am  tired  of 
writing  ;  there  is  a  north  wind  playing  green-gooseberry  with  the 


JOHN  KEATS.  179 


trees,  it  blows  so  keen.     I  don't  care,  so  it  lielps,  even  with  a  side- 
wind,  a  letter  to  me. 

The  filth  canto  of  Dante  pleases  me  more  and  more  ;  it  is 
tliat  one  in  which  he  meets  witli  Paulo  and  Francesca.  I  had 
passed  many  days  in  rather  a  low  state  of  mind,  and  in  the  midst 
of  them  I  dreamt  of  being  in  that  region  of  Hell.  The  dream  was 
one  of  the  most  delightful  enjoyments  I  ever  had  in  my  life ;  I 
floated  about  the  wheeling  atmosphere,  as  it  is  described,  with  a 
beautiful  figure,  to  whose  lips  mine  were  joined,  it  seemed  for  an 
age  ;  and  in  the  midst  of  all  this  cold  and  darkness  I  was  warm  ; 
ever-flowery  tree-tops  sprung  up,  and  we  rested  on  them,  some- 
times with  the  lightness  of  a  cloud,  till  the  wind  blew  us  away 
again.  I  tried  a  Sonnet  on  it :  there  are  fourteen  lines  in  it,  but 
nothing  of  what  I  felt.     Oh  !    that  I  could  dream  it  every  night. 

"  When  lulled  Argus,  baffled,  swooned  and  slept,"  &c.* 

I  want  vcrj?^  much  a  little  of  your  wit,  my  dear  sister — a  let- 
ter of  yours  just  to  bandy  back  a  pun  or  two  across  the  Atlantic, 
and  send  a  quibble  over  the  Floridas.  Now,  by  this  time  you 
have  crumpled  up  your  large  bonnet,  what  do  you  wear  ? — a 
cap  !  Do  you  put  your  hair  in  paper  of  nights  ?  Do  you  pay 
the  Misses  Birkbeck  a  morning  visit  ?  Have  you  any  tea,  or  do 
you  milk-and-water  with  them  ?  What  place  of  worship  do  you 
go  to — the  Quakers,  Moravians,  the  Unitarians,  or  the  Metho- 
dists ?  Are  there  any  flowers  in  bloom  you  like  ?  Any  beautiful 
heaths  ?  Any  streets  full  of  corset-makers  ?  What  sort  of  shoes 
have  you  to  put  those  pretty  feet  of  yours  in  ?  Do  you  desire  com- 
pliments to  one  another  ?  Do  you  ride  on  horseback  ?  What  do 
you  have  for  breakfast,  dinner,  and  supper,  without  mentioning 
lunch  and  bite,  and  wet  and  snack,  and  a  bit  to  stay  one's  sto- 
mach ?  Do  you  get  any  spirits  ?  Now  you  might  easily  distil 
some  whisky,  and,  going  into  the  woods,  set  up  a  whisky-shop  for 
the  monkeys !  Do  you  and  the  other  ladies  get  groggy  on  any 
thing  ?  A  little  so-so-ish,  so  as  to  be  seen  home  with  a  lanthorn  ? 
You  may  perhaps  have  a  game  at  Puss-in-the-corner  :  ladies  are 

*  See  the  "  Literary  Remains." 


150  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

warranted  to  play  at  this  game,  though  they  have  not  whiskers. 
Have  you  a  fiddle  in  the  Settlement,  or,  at  any  rate,  a  Jew's-harp 
which  will  play  in  spite  of  one's  teeth  ?  When  you  have  nothing 
else  to  do  for  a  whole  day,  I'll  tell  you  how  you  may  employ  it : 
first  get  up,  and  when  you  are  dressed,  as  it  would  be  pretty  ear- 
ly, with  a  high  wind  in  the  woods,  give  George  a  cold  pig,  with 
my  compliments,  then  you  may  saunter  into  the  nearest  coffee- 
house, and  after  taking  a  dram  and  a  look  at  the  "  Chronicle," 
go  and  frighten  the  wild  bears  on  the  strength  of  it.  You  may  as 
well  bring  one  home  for  breakfast,  serving  up  the  hoofs,  garnished 
with  bristles,  and  a  grunt  or  two,  to  accompany  the  singing  of  the 
kettle.  Then,  if  George  is  not  up,  give  him  a  colder  pig,  always 
with  my  compliments.  After  you  have  eaten  your  breakfast, 
keep  your  eye  upon  dinner,  it  is  the  safest  way ;  you  should  keep 
a  hawk's  eye  over  your  dinner,  and  keep  hovering  over  it  till  due 
time,  then  pounce  upon  it,  taking  care  not  to  break  any  plates. 
While  you  are  hovering  with  your  dinner  in  prospect,  you  may 
do  a  thousand  things — put  a  hedge-hog  into  George's  hat,  pour  a 
little  water  into  his  rifle,  soak  his  boots  in  a  pail  of  water,  cut  his 
jacket  round  into  shreds,  like   a   Roman  kilt,  or  the  back  of  my 

grandmother's  stays,  tear  off  his  buttons 

The  following  poem,  the  last  I  have  written,  is  the  first  and 
only  one  with  which  I  have  taken  even  moderate  pains ;  1  have, 
for  the  most  part,  dashed  off  my  lines  in  a  hurry;  this  one  I  have 
done  leisurely ;  I  think  it  reads  the  more  richly  for  it,  and  it  will 
I  hope  encourage  me  to  write  other  things  in  even  a  more  peacea- 
ble and  healthy  spirit.  You  must  recollect  that  Psyche  was  not 
embodied  as  a  goddess  before  the  time  of  Apuleius  the  Platonist, 
who  lived  after  the  Augustan  age,  and  consequently  the  goddess 
Was  never  worshipped  or  sacrificed  to  with  any  of  the  ancient  fer- 
vor, and  perhaps  never  thought  of  in  the  old  religion :  I  am  more 
orthodox  than  to  let  a  heathen  goddess  be  neglected. 

{Here  follows  the  "  Ode  to  Psyche^'  already  puhlislied.) 

I  have  been  endeavoring  to  discover  a  better  Sonnet  stanza 
than  we  have.  The  legitimate  does  not  suit  the  language  well, 
from  the  pouncing  rhymes  ;  the  other   appears  too  elegiac,  and 


JOHN  KEATS.  181 


the  couplet  at  the  end  of  it  has  seldom  a  pleasing  effect.     I  do  not 
prerend  to  have  succeeded.     It  will  explain  itself: — 

"  If  by  dull  rhymes  our  English  must  be  chained,"  &c.* 

This  is  the  third  of  May,  and  every  thing  is  in  delightful  for- 
wardness :  the  violets  are  not  withered  before  the  peeping  of  the 
first  rose.  You  must  let  me  know  every  thing,  now  parcels  go 
and  come — what  papers  you  have,  and  what  newspapers  you 
want,  and  other  things.  God  bless  you,  my  dear  brother  and 
sister, 

Your  ever  affectionate  brother, 

John  Keats. 

The  family  of  George  Keats  in  America  possess  a  Dante  co- 
vered with  his  brother's  marginal  notes  and  observations,  and 
these  annotations  on  "  Paradise  Lost,"  appeared  in  an  American 
periodical  of  much  literary  and  philosophical  merit,  entitled  "The 
Dial ;"  they  were  written  in  the  fly-leaves  of  the  book,  and  are  in 
the  tone  of  thought  that  generated  "  Hyperion." 


NOTES  ON  MILTON. 

"  The  genius  of  Milton,  more  particularly  in  respect  to  its 
span  in  immensity,  calculated  him  by  a  sort  of  birth-right  for  such 
an  argument  as  the  '  Paradise  Lost.'  He  had  an  exquisite  pas- 
sion for  what  is  properly,  in  the  sense  of  ease  and  pleasure,  poeti- 
cal luxury ;  and  with  that,  it  appears  to  me,  he  would  fain  have 
been  content,  if  he  could,  so  doing,  preserve  his  self-respect  and 
feeling  of  duty  performed  ;  but  there  was  working  in  him,  as  it 
were,  that  same  sort  of  thing  which  operates  in  the  great  world  to 
the  end  of  a  prophecy's  being  accomplished.  Therefore  he  de- 
voted himself  rather  to  the  ardors  than  the  pleasures  of  song,  so- 
lacing himself,  at  intervals,  with  cups  of  old  wine ;  and  those 
are,  w-ith  some  exceptions,  the  finest  parts  of  the  poem.  With 
some  exceptions ;  for  the  spirit  of  mounting  and  adventure  can 
never  be  unfruitful  nor  unrewarded.     Had  he  not  broken  through 

*  See  the  "  Literary  Remains." 


182  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  clouds  which  envelop  so  deliciously  the  Elysian  fields  of  verse, 
and  committed  himself  to  the  extreme,  we  should  never  have  seen 
Satan  as  described. 

'  But  his  face 
Deep  scars  of  thunder  had  entrenched/  &c. 


"  There  is  a  greatness  which  the  '  Paradise  Lost  '  possesses 
over  every  other  Poem,  the  magnitude  of  contrast,  and  that  is 
softened  by  the  contrast  being  ungrotesque  to  a  degree.  Heaven 
moves  on  like  music  thoughout. 

"  Hell  is  also  peopled  with  angels  ;  it  also  moves  on  like 
music,  not  grating  and  harsh,  but  like  a  grand  accompaniment  in 
the  bass  to  Heaven. 


"  There  is  always  a  great  charm  in  the  openings  of  great 
Poems,  particularly  where  the  action  begins,  as  that  of  Dante's 
Hell.  Of  Hamlet,  the  first  step  must  be  heroic  and  full  of 
power ;  and  nothing  can  be  more  impressive  and  shaded  than  the 
commencement  here  : — 

'  Round  he  throws  his  baleful  eyes 
That  witnessed  huge  affliction  and  dismay. 
Mixed  with  obdurate  pride  and  stedfast  hate  ;'  &c. 

Par.  Lost,  Book  L,  1.  56. 


" '  To  slumber  here,  as  in  the  vales  of  heaven.' 

Book  L,  1.  32L 

"  There  is  a  cool  pleasure  in  the  very  sound  o^  vale. 

"  The  English  word  is  of  the  happiest  chance  [choice].  Mil- 
ton has  put  vales  in  Heaven  and  Hell  with  the  very  utter  affec- 
tion and  yearning  of  a  great  Poet.  It  is  a  sort  of  Delphic  abstrac- 
tion, a  beautiful  thing  made  more  beautiful  by  being  reflected 
and  put  in  a  mist.  The  next  mention  of  '  vale '  is  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  in  the  whole  range  of  poetry. 

'  Others  more  mild 
Retreated  in  a  silent  valley,  sing, 
With  notes  angelical,  to  many  a  harp. 


JOHN  KEATS.  lb„ 


Their  own  heroic  deeds  and  hapless  fall 
By  doom  of  battle  !  and  complain  that  fate 
Free  virtue  should  intlirali  to  force  or  chance. 
Their  song  was  partial ;  but  the  harmony 
(What  could  it  less  when  spirits  immortal  sing?) 
Suspended  hell,  and  took  with  ravishment 
The  thronging  audience.' 

Book  II„  1.  547. 

"  How  much  of  the  charm  is  in  the  word  valley  ! 

"  Tiie  light  and  shade,  the  sort  of  black  brightness,  the  ebon 
diamonding,  the  Ethiop  immortalhy,  the  sorrow,  the  pain,  the  sad 
sweet  melody,  the  phalanges  of  spirits  so  depressed  as  to  be  '  up- 
lifted beyond  hope,'  the  short  mitigation  of  misery,  the  thousand 
melancholies  and  magnificencies  of  the  following  lines  leave  no 
room  for  any  thing  to  be  said  thereon,  but  'so  it  is.' 

'  That  proud  honor  claimed 
Azazel  as  his  right,  a  cherub  tall. 
Who  forthwith  from  the  glittering  staff  unfurled 
The  imperial  ensign,  which,  full  high  advanced. 
Shone  like  a  meteor  streaming  to  the  wind, 
With  gems  and  golden  lustre  rich  emblazed. 
Seraphic  arms  and  trophies  ;  all  the  while 
Sonorous  metal  blowing  martial  sounds  ; 
At  which  the  universal  host  up-sent 
A  shout,  that  tore  hell's  concave,  and  beyond 
Frighted  the  reign  of  Chaos  and  old  Night. 
All  in  a  moment  through  the  gloom  were  seen 
Ten  thousand  banners  rise  into  the  air 
With  orient  colors  waving ;  with  them  rose 
A  forest  huge  of  spears  ;  and  thronging  helms 
Appeared,  and  serried  shields  in  thick  array, 
Of  depth  immeasurable  ;  anon  they  move 
In  perfect  phalanx  to  the  Dorian  mood 
Of  flutes  and  soft  recorders  ;  such  as  raised 
To  height  of  noblest  temper  heroes  old 
Arming  to  battle  ;  and  instead  of  rage 
Deliberate  valor  breathed,  firm  and  unmoved 
With  dread  of  death  to  flight  or  foul  retreat ; 
Nor  wanting  power  to  mitigate  and  suage 
With  solemn  touches  troubled  thoughts,  and  chase 
Anguish,  and  doubt,  and  fear,  and  sorrow,  and  pain 
From  mortal  or  immortal  mind.i.     Thus  thev 


184  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Breathing  united  force,  with  fixed  thought. 
Moved  on  in  silence  to  soft  pipes,  that  charmed 
Their  painful  steps  o'er  the  burnt  soil ;  and  now 
Advanced  in  view  they  stand,  a  horrid  front 
Of  dreadful  length  and  dazzling  arms,  in  guise 
Of  warriors  old  with  ordered  spear  and  shield. 
Awaiting  what  command  their  mighty  chief 
Had  to  impose.' 

Book  L,  1.  533—567. 


"  How  noble  and  collected  an  indignation  against  kings,  line 
595,  Book  1st.  His  very  wishing  should  have  had  power  to 
pluck  that  feeble  animal  Charles  from  his  bloody  throne.  The 
evil  days  had  come  to  him  :  he  hit  the  new  system  of  things  a 
mighty  mental  blow  ;  the  exertion  must  have  had,  or  is  yet  to 
have,  some  sequences. 


"  The  management  of  this  poem  is  Apollonian.  Satan  first 
'throws  round  his  baleful  eyes,'  then  awakes  his  legions;  he 
consults,  he  sets  forward  on  his  voyage,  and  just  as  he  is  getting 
to  the  end  of  it,  see  the  Great  God  and  our  first  Parent,  and  that 
same  Satan,  all  brought  in  one  vision  ;  we  have  the  invocation  to 
light  before  we  mount  to  heaven,  we  breathe  more  freely,  we 
feel  the  great  author's  consolations  coming  thick  upon  him  at  a 
time  when  he  complains  most ;  we  are  getting  ripe  for  diversity  ; 
the  immediate  topic  of  the  poem  opens  with  a  grand  perspective 
of  all  concerned. 


"  Book  IV.  A  friend  of  mine  says  this  book  has  the  finest 
opening  of  any  ;  the  point  of  time  is  gigantically  critical,  the  wax 
is  melted,  the  seal  about  to  be  applied,  and  Milton  breaks  out, 

'  O  for  that  warning  voice,'  &c. 

There  is,  moreover,  an  opportunity  for  a  grandeur  of  tenderness. 
The  opportunity  is  not  lost.  Nothing  can  be  higher,  nothing  so 
more  than  Delphic. 


JOHN  KEATS.  185 


"  There  are  two  specimens  of  very  extraordinary  beauty  in 
the  '  Paradise  Lost ;'  they  are  of  a  nature,  so  far  as  I  have  read, 
unexampled  elsewhere :  they  are  entirely  distinct  from  the  brief 
pathos  of  Dante,  and  they  are  not  to  be  found  even  in  Shakspeare. 
These  are,  according  to  the  great  prerogative  of  poetry,  better 
described  in  themselves  than  by  a  volume.  The  one  is  in  line 
268,  Book  IV : 

'  Not  that  fair  field 
Of  Enna,  where  Proserpine  gathering  flowers. 
Herself  a  fairer  flower,  by  gloomy  Dis 
Was  gathered,  which  cost  Ceres  all  that  pain 
To  seek  her  through  the  world.' 

"  The  other  is  that  ending  '  nor  could  the  Muse  defend  her  son.' 

'  But  drive  far  off  the  barbarous  dissonance 
Of  Bacchus  and  his  revelers,  the  race 
Of  that  wild  rout  that  tore  the  Thracian  bard 
In  Rhodope,  wheie  woods  and  rocks  had  ears 
To  rapture,  till  the  savage  clamor  drowned 
Both  harp  and  voice  ;  nor  could  the  Muse  defend 
Her  son.' 

"  These  appear  exclusively  Miltonic,  without  the  shadow  of 
another  mind  ancient  or  modern. 


"Book  VI,  line  5S.  Reluctant,  with  its  original  and  modern 
meaning  combined  and  woven  together,  with  all  its  shades  of  sig- 
nification, has  a  powerful  effect. 


"  Milton  in  many  instances  pursues  his  imagination  to  the  ut- 
most, he  is  '  sagacious  of  his  quarry,'  he  sees  beauty  on  the  wing, 
pounces  upon  it,  and  gorges  it  to  the  producing  his  essential  verse. 

'  So  from  the  root  springs  lither  the  green  stalk.' 

"  But  in  no  instance  is  this  sort  of  perseverance  more  exem- 
plified, than  in  wliat  may  be  called  his  stationing  or  statuary.  He 
is  not  content  with  simple  description,  he  must  station  ;  thus  here 


186  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

we  not  only  see  how  ihe  birds  '  loith  clang  despised  the  ground,'  but 
we  see  them  'under  a  cloud  in  prospect.'  So  we  see  Adam  'fair 
indeed  and  tall,'  '  under  a  plantain,'  and  so  we  see  Satan  '  disfi- 
gured' '  on  the  Assyrian  mount.'  " 


The  copy  of  "  Spenser  "  which  Keats  had  in  daily  use,  con- 
tains the  following  stanza,  inserted  at  the  close  of  Canto  ii,  Book 
V.  His  sympathies  were  very  much  on  the  side  of  the  revolu- 
tionary "  Gyant,"  who  "undertook  for  to  repair"  the  "realms 
and  nations  run  awry,"  and  to  suppress  "  tyrants  that  make  men 
subject  to  their  law,"  "  and  lordings  curbe  that  commons  over- 
aw,"  while  he  grudged  the  legitimate  victory,  as  he  rejected  the 
conservative  philosophy,  of  the  "  righteous  Artegall "  and  his 
comrade,  the  fierce  defender  of  privilege  and  order.  And  he  ex- 
pressed, in  this  ex  post  facto  prophecy,  his  conviction  of  the  ulti- 
mate triumph  of  freedom  and  equality  by  the  power  of  transmitted 
knowledge. 

0"  In  after-time,  a  sage  of  mickle  lore 
Yclep'd  Typographus,  the  Giant  took, 
And  did  refit  his  limbs  as  heretofore, 
And  made  him  read  in  many  a  learned  book. 
And  into  many  a  lively  legend  look  ; 
Thereby  in  goodly  themes  so  training  him, 
That  all  his  brutishness  he  quite  forsook,  v 

When,  meeting  Artegall  and  Talus  grim, 
The  one  he  struck  stone-blind,  the  other's  eyes  wox  dim  " 

The  "  Literary  Remains "  will  contain  many  sonnets  and 
songs,  written  during  these  months,  in  the  intervals  of  more  com- 
plete compositions ;  but  the  following  pieces  are  so  fragmentary 
as  more  becomingly  to  take  their  place  in  the  narrative  of  the 
author's  life,  than  to  show  as  substantive  productions.  Yet  it  is, 
perhaps,  just  in  verses  like  these  that  the  individual  character 
pronounces  itself  most  distinctly,  and  confers  a  general  interest 
which  more  care  of  art  at  once  elevates  and  diminishes.  The 
occasional  verses  of  a  great  poet  are  I'ecords,  as  it  were,  of  his 
poetical  table-talk,   remembrances  of  his  daily  self  and  its  intcl- 


JOHN  KEATS.  187 


loctual  companionship,  more  delightful  from  what  they  recall,  than 
for  what  they  are — more  interesting  for  what  they  suggest,  than 
for  what  they  were  ever  meant  to  be. 

FRAGMENT. 

Where's  the  Poet  ?  show  him  !  show  him ! 

Muses  nine !  that  I  may  know  him  ! 

'Tis  the  man  who  with  a  man 

Is  an  equal,  be  he  King, 

Or  poorest  of  the  beergar-clan, 

Or  any  other  wondrous  thing 

A  man  may  be  'twi.xt  ape  and  Plato ; 

'Tis  the  man  who  with  a  bird. 

Wren,  or  Eagle,  finds  his  way  to 

All  its  instincts  ;  he  hath  heard 

The  Lion's  roaring,  and  can  tell 

What  his  horny  throat  e.xpresseth  ; 

And  to  him  the  Tiger's  yell 

Comes  articulate  and  presseth 

On  his  ear  like  mother-tongue. 


MODERN  LOVE. 


And  what  is  love  1     It  is  a  doll  dress'd  up 

For  idleness  to  cosset,  nurse,  and  dandle  ; 

A  thing  of  soft  misnomers,  so  divine 

That  silly  youth  doth  think  to  make  itself 

Divine  by  loving,  and  so  goes  on 

Yawning  and  doting  a  whole  summer  long, 

Till  Miss's  comb  is  made  a  pearl  tiara. 

And  common  Wellingtons  turn  Romeo  boots  ; 

Then  Cleopatra  lives  at  number  seven. 

And  Anthony  resides  in  Brunswick  Square. 

Fools!  if  some  passions  high  have  warm'd  the  world, 

If  Queens  and  Soldiers  have  play'd  deep  for  hearts, 

It  is  no  reason  why  such  agonies 

Should  be  more  common  than  the  growth  of  weeds. 

Fools  !  make  me  whole  again  that  weighty  pearl 

The  Queen  of  Egypt  melted,  and  I'll  say 

That  ye  may  love  in  spite  of  beaver  hats. 


188  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


FRAGMENT  OF  THE  "  CASTLE  BUILDER. 


To-night  I'll  have  my  friar — let  me  think 

About  my  room — I'll  have  it  in  the  pink  ; 

It  should  be  rich  and  sombre,  and  the  moon. 

Just  in  its  mid-life  in  the  midst  of  June, 

Should  look  thro'  four  large  windows  and  display 

Clear,  but  for  gold-fish  vases  in  the  way. 

Their  glassy  diamonding  on  Turkish  floor  ; 

The  tapers  keep  aside,  an  hour  and  more. 

To  see  what  else  the  moon  alone  can  show  ; 

While  the  night-breeze  doth  softly  let  us  know 

My  terrace  is  well  bower'd  with  oranges. 

Upon  the  floor  the  dullest  spirit  sees 

A  guitar-ribband  and  a  lady's  glove 

Beside  a  crumple-leaved  taie  of  love  ; 

A  tambour-frame,  with  Venus  sleeping  there. 

All  finished  but  some  ringlets  of  her  hair  ; 

A  viol,  bow-strings  torn,  cross-wise  upon 

A  glorious  folio  of  Anacreon  ; 

A  skull  upon  a  mat  of  roses  lying, 

Ink'd  purple  with  a  song  concerning  dying  - 

An  hour-glass  on  the  turn,  amid  the  trails 

Of  pfission-flower  ; — ^just  in  time  there  sails 

A  cloud  across  the  moon — the  lights  brmg  in  t 

And  see  what  more  my  phantasy  can  win. 

It  is  a  gorgeous  room,  but  somewhat  sad  ; 

The  draperies  are  so,  as  tho'  they  bad 

Been  made  for  Cleopatra's  winding  sheet  ; 

And  opposite  the  stedfast  eye  doth  meet 

A  spacious  looking-glass,  upon  whose  face. 

In  letters  raven-sombre,  you  may  trace. 

Old  "  Mene,  Mene,  Tekel  Upharsin." 

Greek  busts  and  statuary  have  ever  been 

Held,  by  the  finest  spirits,  fitter  far 

Than  vase  grotesque  and  Siamcsian  jar  ; 

Therefore  'lis  sure  a  want  of  attic  taste 

That  I  should  rather  love  a  gothic  waste 

Of  eyesight  gn  cinque-colored  potter's  clay, 

Tiian  on  the  marble  fairness  of  old  Greece. 

My  table-coverlits  of  Jason's  fleece 


JOHN  KEATS.  i89 


And  black  Numidian  sheep  wool  should  be  wrought, 

Gold,  black,  and  heavy  from  the  Lama  brought. 

My  ebon  sofas  should  delicious  be 

With  down  from  Leda's  cygnet  progeny. 

My  pictures  all  Salvator's,  save  a  few 

Of  Titian's  portraiture,  and  one,  though  new, 

Of  Haydon's  in  its  fresh  magnificence. 

My  wine — O  good  !  'tis  here  at  my  desire. 

And  I  must  sit  to  supper  wiih  my  friar. 


FRAGMfc:NT. 


"  Under  the  flag 
Of  each  his  faction,  tiiey  to  battle  bring 
Their  embryo  atoms." 

Milton. 

Welcome  joy,  and  welcome  sorrow, 
Lethe's  weed,  and  Hermes  feather  ; 

Come  to-day,  and  come  to-morrow, 
I  do  love  you  both  together ! — 
I  love  to  mark  sad  faces  in  fair  weather  ; 

And  hear  a  merry  laugh  amid  the  thunder 
Fair  and  foul  I  love  together  : 

Meadows  sweet  where  flames  are  under. 

And  a  giggle  at  a  wonder  ; 

Visage  sage  at  pantomime  ; 

Funeral,  and  steeple-chime  ; 

Infant  playing  with  a  skull  ; 

Morning  fair,  and  shipwreck'd  hull  ; 

Nightshade  with  the  woodbine  kissing  ; 

Serpents  in  red  roses  hissing  ; 

Cleopatra  regal-dress'd 

With  the  aspic  at  her  breast  ; 

Dancing  music,  music  sad, 

Both  together,  sane  and  mad  ; 

Muses  bright,  and  muses  pale  ; 

Sombre  Saturn,  Momus  hale  ; — 

Laugh  and  sigh  ;  and  laugh  again  ; 

Oh  the  sweetness  of  the  pain ! 
9* 


190  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Muses  bright,  and  muses  pale, 
Bare  your  faces  of  the  veil  ; 
Let  me  see :  and  let  me  write 
Of  the  day,  and  of  the  night — 
Both  together  : — let  me  slake 
All  my  thirst  for  sweet  heart-ache  ! 
Let  my  bower  be  of  yew, 
Interwreath'd  with  myrtles  new  ; 
Pines  and  lime-trees  full  in  bloom. 
And  my  couch  a  low  grass  tomb. 


A  singular  instance  of  Keats's  delicate  perception  occurred  in 
the  composition  of  the  "  Ode  on  Melancholy."  In  the  original 
manuscript,  he  had  intended  to  represent  the  vulgar  connection 
of  Melancholy  with  gloom  and  horror,  in  contrast  with  the  emo- 
tion that  incites  to, 

"  glut  thy  sorrow  on  a  morning  rose, 
Or  on  the  rainbow  of  the  salt  sand-wave, 
Or  on  the  wealth  of  globed  peonies  ;" 

ai)d  which  essentially 

"  lives  in  Beauty — Beauty  that  must  die, 
And  Joy,  whose  hand  is  ever  at  his  lips 
Bidding  adieu." 

The  first  stanza,  therefore,  was  the   following  :  as  grim  a  picture 
as  Blake  or  Fuseli  could  have  dreamed  and  painted  : 

"  Though  you  should  build  a  bark  of  dead  men's  bones, 
And  rear  a  phantom  gibbet  for  a  mast. 
Stitch  shrouds  together  for  a  sail,  with  groans 
To  fill  it  out,  blood-stained  and  aghast  ; 
Although  your  rudder  be  a  dragon's  tail 
Long  severed,  yet  still  hard  with  agony. 
Your  cordage  large  uprootings  frdtii  the  skull 
Of  bald  Medusa,  certes  you  would  fail 
To  find  the  Melancholy — whether  she 
Dreameth  in  any  isle  of  Lethe  dull." 


JOHN  KEATS.  191 


But  no  sooner  was  this  written,  than  the  poet  became  conscious 
that  the  coarseness  of  the  contrast  would  destroy  the  general  effect 
of  luxurious  tenderness  which  it  was  the  ol)ject  of  the  poem  to 
produce,  and  he  confined  the  gross  notion  of  melancholy  to  less 
violent  images,  and  let  the  ode  at  once  begin, — 

No,  no  !  go  not  to  Lethe,  neither  twist 

Wolf's  bane,  tight-rooted,  for  its  poisonous  wine  ; 

Nor  suffer  thy  pale  forehead  to  be  kissed 

By  nightshade,  ruby  grape  of  Proserpine,"  &;c. 


The  "  Eve  of  St.  Agnes"  was  begun  on  a  visit  in  Hampshire, 
at  the  commencement  of  this  year,  and  finished  on  his  return  to 
Hampstead.  It  is  written  still  under  Spenserian  influences,  but 
with  a  striking  improvement  in  form,  both  of  diction  and  versifi- 
cation ;  the  story  is  easily  conducted,  and  the  details  picturesque 
in  the  highest  degree,  without  the  intricate  designing  of  the  earlier 
poems.  Lord  Jeffrey  remarks :  "  The  glory  and  charm  of  the 
poem  is  the  description  of  the  fair  maiden's  antique  chamber  and 
of  all  that  passes  in  that  sweet  and  angel-guarded  sanctuary,  eve- 
ry part  of  which  is  touched  with  colors  at  once  rich  and  delicate, 
and  the  whole  chastened  and  harmonized  in  the  midst  of  its  gor- 
geous distinctness  by  a  pervading  grace  and  purity,  that  indicate 
not  less  clearly  the  exaltation,  than  the  refinement  of  the  author's 
fancy." 


The  greater  part  of  this  summer  [1819]  was  passed  at  Shank- 
lin,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  in  company  with  Mr.  Brown,  who  ear- 
nestly  encouraged  the  full  development  of  the  genius  of  his  friend. 
A  combination  of  intellectual  efibrt  was  here  attempted  which 
could  hardly  have  been  expected  to  be  very  successful.  They 
were  to  write  a  play  between  them — Brown  to  supply  the  fable, 
characters,  and  dramatic  conduct — Keats,  the  diction  and  the  verse. 
The  two  composers  sat  at  a  table,  and  as  Mr.  Brown  sketched 
out  the  incidents  of  each  scene,  Keats  translated  them  into  his 
rich  and  ready  language.     As  a  literary  diversion,   this  process 


192  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

was  probably  both  amusing  and  instructive,  but  it  docs  not  require 
any  profound  aesthetic  pretensions  to  pronounce  that  a  work  of  art 
thus  created  could  hardly  be  worthy  of  the  name.  Joint  compo- 
sitions, except  of  a  humorous  character,  are  always  dangerous 
attempts,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  such  a  transference  of  facul- 
ties as"they  presuppose,  is  possible  at  all  ;  at  any  rate,  the  unity 
of  form  and  feeling  must  receive  an  injury  hard  to  be  compensa- 
ted by  any  apparent  improvement  of  the  several  parts.  Nay,  it 
is  quite  conceivable  that  two  men,  either  of  whom  would  have 
separately  produced  an  effective  work,  should  give  an  incomplete 
and  hybrid  character  to  a  common  production,  sufficient  to  neu- 
tralize every  excellence  and  annihilate  every  charm.  A  poem  or 
a  drama  is  not  a  picture,  in  which  one  artist  may  paint  the  land- 
scape, and  another  the  figures  ;  and  a  certain  imperfection  and  in- 
feriority of  parts  is  often  more  agreeable  than  an  attempt  at  that 
entire  completeness  which  it  is  only  given  to  the  very  highest  to 
attain.  The  incidents,  as  suggested  by  Mr.  Brown,  after  some 
time  struck  Keats  as  too  melo-dramatic,  and  he  completed  the  fifth 
act  alone.  This  tragedy,  "  Otho  the  Great,"  was  sent  to  Drury 
Lane,  and  accepted  by  Elliston,  with  a  promise  to  bring  it  for- 
ward the  same  season.  Kean  seems  to  have  been  pleased  with 
the  principal  character,  and  to  have  expressed  a  desire  to  act  it. 
The  manager,  however,  from  some  unknown  cause,  declared  him- 
self unable  to  perform  his  engagement,  and  Mr,  Brown,  who  con- 
ducted the  negotiation  without  mention  of  Keats's  name,  withdrew 
the  manuscript  and  offered  it  to  Covent  Garden,  where  it  met 
with  no  better  fate,  to  the  considerable  annoyance  of  the  author, 
who  wrote  to  his  friend  Rice,  "  'Twould  do  one's  heart  good  to  see 
Macready  in  Ludolph."  The  unfitness  of  this  tragedy  for  rep- 
resentation is  too  apparent  to  permit  the  managers  of  the  two  tiiea- 
tres  to  be  accused  of  injustice  or  partiality.  Had  the  name  of 
Keats  been  as  popular  as  it  was  obscure,  and  his  previous  writing 
as  successful  as  it  was  misrepresented  and  misunderstood,  there 
was  not  sufficient  interest  in  either  the  plot  or  the  characters  to 
keep  the  play  on  the  stage  for  a  week.  The  story  is  confused 
and  unreal,  and  the  personages  are  mere  embodied  passions;  the 
heroine  and  her  brother  walk  through  the  vchole  piece  like  the 
demons  of  an  old  romance,  and  the  historical  character,  who  gives 


JOHN  KEATS.  193 

his  name  to  the  play,  is  almost  excluded  from_its  action  and  made 
a  part  of  the  pageantry.  To  the  reader,  however,  the  want  of  in- 
terest is  fully  redeemed  by  the  beauty  and  power  of  passages 
continually  recurring,  and  which  are  not  cited  here,  only  because 
it  is  pleasanter  for  everyone  to  find  them  out  for  himself.  There 
is  scarce  a  page  without  some  touch  of  a  great  poet,  and  the  con- 
trast between  the  glory  of  the  diction  and  the  poverty  of  the  in- 
vention is  very  striking.  I  own  I  doubt  whether  if  the  contri- 
vance of  the  double  authorship  had  not  been  resorted  to,  Keats 
could  of  himself,  at  least  at  this  time,  have  produced  a  much  bet- 
ter play  :  the  failure  of  Coleridge's  "  Remorse  "  is  an  example  to 
the  point,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  philosophic  generalities  of  the 
one  poet  did  not  stand  more  in  the  way  of  dramatic  excellence 
than  the  superhuman  imagery  and  creative  fancy  of  the  other ; 
it  is  conceivable  that  Keats  might  have  written  a  "  Midsummer's 
Night  Dream,"  just  as  Coleridge  might  have  written  a  "  Ham- 
let ;"  but  in  both  that  great  human  element  would  have  been  want- 
ing, which  Shakspeare  so  wonderfully  combines  with  abstract  re- 
flection and  with  fairy-land. 

As  soon  as  Keats  had  finished  "  Otho,"  Mr.  Brown  suggested 
to  him  the  character  and  reign  of  King  Stephen,  beginning  with 
his  defeat  by  the  Empre.ss  Maud  and  ending  with  the  death  of 
his  son  Eustace,  as  a  fine  subject  for  an  English  historical  tra- 
gedy. This  Keats  undertook,  assuming,  however,  to  himself  the 
whole  conduct  of  the  drama,  and  wrote  some  hundred  and  thirty 
lines  ;  this  task,  however,  soon  gave  place  to  the  impressive  tale 
of  "  Lamia,"  which  had  been  in  hand  for  some  time,  and  which 
he  wrote  with  great  care,  after  much  study  of  Dryden's  versifi- 
cation. It  is  quite  the  perfection  of  narrative  poetry.  The  story 
was  taken  from  that  treasure-house  of  legendary  philosophy, 
"  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy." 

He  contemplated  a  poem  of  some  length  on  the  subject  of 
"  Sabrina,"  as  suggested  by  Milton,  and  often  spoke  of  it,  but  I 
do  not  find  any  fragments  of  the  work. 

A  letter  to  Mr.  Reynolds,  dated  Shanklin,  July  12,  contains 
allusions  to  his  literary  progress  and  his  pecuniary  difficulties. 


194  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


"  You  will  be  glad  to  hear,  under  my  own  hand,  (though 
Rice  says  we  are  like  Sauntering  Jack  and  Idle  Joe,)  how  dili- 
gent I  have  been,  and  am  being.  I  have  finished  the  act,  and  in 
the  interval  of  beginning  the  second  have  proceeded  pretty  well 
with  '  Lamia,'  finishing  the  first  part,  which  consists  of  about  four 
hundred  lines.  ...  I  have  great  hopes  of  success,  because  I 
make  use  of  my  judgment  more  deliberately  than  I  have  yet  done  ; 
but  in  case  of  failure  with  the  world,  I  shall  find  my  content. 
And  here  (as  I  know  you  have  my  good  at  heart  as  much  as  a 
brother)  I  can  only  repeat  to  you  what  J  have  said  to  George — 
that  however  I  should  like  to  enjoy  what  the  competencies  of  life 
procure,  I  am  in  no  wise  dashed  at  a  difTerent  prospect.  I  have 
spent  too  many  thoughtful  days,  and  moralized  through  too  many 
nights  for  that,  and  fruitless  would  they  be,  indeed,  if  they  did 
not,  by  degrees,  make  me  look  upon  the  affairs  of  the  world  with 
a  healthy  deliberation.  I  have  of  late  been  moulting  : — not  for 
fresh  feathers  and  wings, — they  are  gone,  and  in  their  stead  I 
hope  to  have  a  pair  of  patient  sublunary  legs.  I  have  altered, 
not  from  a  chrysalis  into  a  butterfly,  but  the  contrary ;  having 
too  little  loopholes,  whence  I  may  look  out  into  the  stage  of  the 
world  :  and  that  world,  on  our  coming  here,  I  almost  forgot. 
The  first  time  I  sat  down  to  write,  I  could  scarcely  believe  in  the 
necessity  for  so  doing.  It  struck  me  as  a  great  oddity.  Yet  the 
very  corn  which  is  now  so  beautiful,  as  if  it  had  only  took  to 
ripening  yesterday,  is  for  the  market ;  so,  why  should  I  be 
delicate?" 


SlIANKLIN,  August  Q,  1819. 

My  Dear  Dilke, 

I  will  not  make  my  diligence  an  excuse  for  not  writing 
to  you  sooner,  because  I  consider  idleness  a  much  better  plea. 
A  man  in  the  hurry  of  business  of  any  sort,  is  expected,  and 
ought  to  be  expected,  to  look  to  every  thing;  his  mind  is  in  a 
whirl,  and  what  matters  it,  what  whirl  ?  But  to  require  a  letter 
of  a  man  lost  in  idleness,  is  the  utmost  cruelty ;  you  cut  the 
thread  of  his  existence  ;  you  beat,  you  pummel  him  ;  you  sell  his 


JOHN  KEATS.  195 


goods  and  chattels;  you  put  liim  in  prison;  you  impale  him  ; 
you  crucify  him.  If  I  had  not  put  pen  to  paper  since  I  saw  you, 
this  would  be  to  me  a  vi  et  armis  taking  up  before  the  judge  ;  but 
having  got  over  my  darling  lounging  habits  a  little,  it  is  with 
scarcely  any  pain  I  come  to  this  dating  from  Shanklin.  The 
Isle  of  Wight  is  but  so-so,  &;c.  Rice  and  I  passed  rather  a  dull 
time  of  it.  I  hope  he  will  not  repent  coming  with  me.  Fle  was 
unwell,  and  I  was  not  in  very  good  health  ;  and  I  am  afraid  we 
made  each  other  worse  by  acting  upon  each  other's  spirits.  We 
would  grow  as  melancholy  as  need  be.  I  confess  I  cannot  bear 
a  sick  person  in  a  house,  especially  alone.  It  weighs  upon  me 
day  and  night,  and  more  so  when  perhaps  the  cause  is  irretriev- 
able. Indeed,  I  think  Rice  is  in  a  dangerous  state.  I  have  had 
a  letter  from  him  which  speaks  favorably  of  his  health  at  present. 
Brown  and  I  are  pretty  well  harnessed  again  to  our  dog-cart.  I 
mean  the  tragedy,  which  goes  on  sinkingly.  We  are  thinking  of 
introducing  an  elephant,  but  have  not  historical  reference  within 
reach  to  determine  us  as  to  Otho's  menagerie.  When  Brown 
first  mentioned  this  I  took  it  for  a  joke ;  however,  he  brings  such 
plausible  reasons,  and  discourses  so  eloquently  on  the  dramatic 
effect,  that  I  am  giving  it  a  serious  consideration.  The  Art  of 
Poetry  is  not  sufficient  for  us,  and  if  we  get  on  in  that  as  well  as 
we  do  in  painting,  we  shall,  by  next  winter,  crush  the  Reviews 
and  the  Royal  Academy.  Indeed,  if  Brown  would  take  a  little 
of  my  advice,  he  could  not  fail  to  be  first  pallette  of  his  day.  But, 
odd  as  it  may  appear,  ho  says  plainly  that  he  cannot  see  any 
force  in  my  plea  of  putting  skies  in  the  back-ground,  and  leaving 
Indian-ink  out  of  an  ash-tree.  The  other  day  lie  was  sketching 
Shanklin  Church,  and  as  I  saw  how  the  business  was  going  on,  I 
challenged  him  to  a  trial  of  skill :  he  lent  me  pencil  and  paper. 
We  keep  the  sketches  to  contend  for  the  prize  at  the  Gallery.  I 
will  not  say  whose  I  think  best,  but  really  1  do  not  think  Brown's 
done  to  the  top  of  the  Art. 

A  word  or  two  on  the  Isle  of  Wight.  I  have  been  no  further 
than  Steephill.  If  I  may  guess,  I  should  [say]  that  there  is  no 
finer  part  in  the  island  than  from  this  place  to  Steephill.  I  do 
not  hesitate  to  say  it  is  fine.  Bonchurch  is  the  best.  But  I  have 
been  so  many  finer  walks,  with  a  back-ground  of  lake  and  moun- 


196  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

tain,  instead  of  the  sea,  that  I  am  not  much  touched  with  it,  though 
I  credit  it  for  all  the  surprise  1  should  have  felt  if  it  had  taken 
my  cockney  maiden-head.  But  I  may  call  myself  an  old  stager 
in  the  picturesque,  and  unless  it  be  something  very  large  and 
overpowering,  I  cannot  receive  any  extraordinary  relish. 

1  am  sorry  to  hear  that  Charles  is  so  much  oppressed  at  West- 
minster, though  I  am  sure  it  will  be  the  finest  touchstone  for  his 
metal  in  the  world.  His  troubles  will  grow,  day  by  day,  less,  as 
his  age  and  strength  increase.  The  very  first  battle  he  wins  will 
lift  him  from  the  tribe  of  Manasseh.  I  do  not  know  how  I  should 
feel  were  I  a  father,  but  I  hope  I  should  strive  with  all  my  power 
not  to  let  the  present  trouble  me.  When  your  boy  shall  be 
twenty,  ask  him  about  his  childish  troubles,  and  he  will  have  no 
more  memory  of  them  than  you  have  of  yours. 

So  Reynolds's  piece  succeeded  :  that  is  all  well.  Papers 
have,  with  thanks,  been  duly  received.  We  leave  this  place  on 
the  13th,  and  will  let  you  know  where  we  may  be  a  few  days 
after.  Brown  says  he  will  write  when  the  fit  comes  on  him. 
If  you  will  stand  law  expenses  I'll  beat  him  into  one  before  his 
time. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

In  August,  the  friends  removed  to  Winchester,  where  Mr. 
Brown,  however,  soon  left  him  alone.  This  was  always  a  favor- 
ite residence  of  Keats  :  the  noble  cathedral  and  its  quiet  close — 
the  green-sward  and  elm-tree  walks,  were  especially  agreeable 
to  him.     He  wrote   thence  the  following  letters   and   extracts : — 


To  Mr.  Haydon. 

I  came  here  in  the  hopes  of  getting  a  library,  but  there  is 
none  :  the  High  Street  is  as  quiet  as  a  lamb.  At  Mr.  Cross's  is  a 
very  interesting  picture  of  Albert  Durer,  who,  being  alive  in 
such  warlike  times,  was  perhaps  forced  to  paint  in  his  gauntlets, 
so  we  must  make  all  allowances. 


JOHN  KEATS.  197 


I  have  done  nothing,  except  for  the  annusement  of  a  few  peo- 
ple who  refine  upon  their  feelings  till  any  thing  in  the  wn-under- 
standable  way  will  go  down  with  them.  I  have  no  cause  to  com- 
plain, because  I  am  certain  any  thing  really  fine  will  in  these 
days  be  felt.  I  have  no  doubt  that  if  I  had  written  "  Othello  "  I 
should  have  been  cheered.     I  shall  go  on  with  patience. 

To  Mr.  Bailey. 

"We  removed  to  Winchester  for  the  convenience  of  a  library, 
and  find  it  an  exceedingly  pleasant  town,  enriched  with  a  beauti- 
ful cathedral,  and  surrounded  by  a  fresh-looking  country.  We 
are  in  tolerably  good  and  cheap  lodgings.  Within  these  two 
months  I  have  written  fifteen  hundred  lines,  most  of  which,  be- 
sides many  more  of  prior  composition,  j'ou  will  probably  see  by 
next  winter.  I  have  written  two  tales,  one  from  Boccacio,  called 
the  "Pot  of  Basil,"  and  another  called  "St.  Agnes'  Eve,"  on  a 
popular  superstition,  and  a  third  called  "Lamia"  (half finished). 
I  have  also  been  writing  parts  of  my  "  Hyperion,"  and  completed 
four  acts  of  a  tragedy.  It  was  the  opinion  of  most  of  my  friends 
that  I  should  never  be  able  to  write  a  scene :  I  will  endeavor  to 
wipe  away  the  prejudice.  I  sincerely  hope  you  will  be  pleased 
when  my  labors,  since  we  last  saw  each  other,  shall  reach  you. 
One  of  my  ambitions  is  to  make  as  great  a  revolution  in  modern 
dramatic  writing  as  Kean  has  done  in  acting.  Another,  to  upset 
the  drawling  of  the  blue-stocking  literary  world.  If,  in  the 
course  of  a  few  years,  I  do  these  two  things,  1  ought  to  die  con- 
tent, and  my  friends  should  drink  a  dozen  of  claret  on  my  tomb. 
I  am  convinced  more  and  more  every  day,  that  (excepting  the 
human-friend  philosopher),  a  fine  writer  is  the  most  genuine  being 
in  the  world.  Shakspeare  and  the  "Paradise  Lost "  every  day 
become  greater  wonders  to  me.  I  look  upon  fine  phi'ases  like  a 
lover. 

I  was  glad  to  see,  by  a  passage  of  one  of  Brown's  letters, 
some  time  ago,  from  the  North,  that  you  were  in  such  good  spirits. 
Since  that,  you  have  been  married,  and  in  congratulating  you,  I 
wish  you  every  continuance  of  them.  Present  my  respects  to 
Mrs.  Bailey.     This  sounds  oddly  to  me,  and  I  dare   say  I  do  it 


198  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

awkwardly  enough ;  but  I  suppose  by  this  time  it  is  notliing  new 
to  you. 

Brown's  remembrances  to  you.     As  far  as  I   know,  we  shall 
remain  at  Winchester  for  a  goodish  while. 

Ever  your  sincere  friend. 

John  Keats. 


Winchester,  23^  August,  1819. 

My  Dear  Taylor, 

*  *  *  ^  * 

I  feel  every  confidence  that,  if  I  choose,  I  may  be  a  popular 
writer.  That  I  will  never  be  ;  but  for  all  that  I  will  get  a  liveli- 
hood. I  equally  dislike  the  favor  of  the  public  with  the  love  of  a 
woman.  They  are  both  a  cloying  treacle  to  the  wings  of  inde- 
pendence. ]  shall  now  consider  them  (the  people)  as  debtors  to 
me  for  verses,  not  myself  to  them  for  admiration,  which  I  can  do 
without.  I  have  of  late  been  indulging  my  spleen  by  composing 
a  preface  at  them  ;  after  all  resolving  never  to  write  a  preface  at 
all.  "  There  are  so  many  verses,"  would  I  have  said  to  them; 
"  give  so  much  means  for  me  to  buy  pleasure  with,  as  a  relief  to 
my  hours  of  labor."  You  will  observe  at  the  end  of  this,  if  you 
put  down  the  letter,  "How  a  solitary  life  engenders  pride  and 
egotism !"  True — I  know  it  does :  but  this  pride  and  egotism 
will  enable  me  to  write  finer  things  than  any  thing  else  could,  so 
I  will  indulge  it.  Just  so  much  as  T  am  humbled  by  the  genius 
above  ray  grasp,  am  I  exalted  and  look  with  hate  and  contempt 
upon  the  literary  world.  A  drummer-boy  who  holds  out  his  hand 
familiarly  to  a  field-marshal, — that  drummer-boy  with  me  is  the 
good  word  and  favor  of  the  public.  Who  could  wish  to  be  among 
the  common-place  crowd  of  the  little-famous,  who  are  each  indi- 
vidually lost  in  a  throng  made  up  of  themselves?  Is  this  worth 
louting  or  playing  the  hypocrite  for  ?  To  beg  suffrages  for  a 
seat  on  the  benches  of  a  myriad-aristocracy  in  letters  ?  This  is 
not  wise — I  am  not  a  wise  man.  'Tis  pride.  I  will  give  you 
a  definition  of  a  proud  man.  He  is  a  man  who  has  neither 
vanity  nor  wisdom — one  filled  with  hatred  cannot  be  vain, 
neither  can  he  be  wise.     Pardon   me  for  hammerincr  instead  of 


JOHN  KEATS.  199 

writing.     Remember  me  to  Woodhouse,  Hessey,  and  all  in  Percy 
Street. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

John  Keats. 


Winchester,  August  25,  [1819.] 

My  Dear  Reynolds, 

By  this  post  I  write  to  Rice,  who  Avill  tell  you  why 
we  have  left  Shanklin,  and  how  we  like  this  place.  I  have  in- 
deed scarcely  any  thing  else  to  say,  leading  so  monotonous  a  life, 
unless  I  was  to  give  you  a  history  of  sensations  and  day  night- 
mares. You  would  not  find  me  at  all  unhappy  in  it,  as  all  my 
thoughts  and  feelings,  which  are  of  the  selfish  nature,  home  spe- 
culations, every  day  continue  to  make  me  more  iron.  I  am  con- 
vinced more  and  more,  every  day,  that  fine  writing  is,  next  to  fine 
doing,  the  top  thing  in  the  world  ;  the  "  Paradise  Lost  "  becomes 
a  greater  wonder.  The  more  I  know  what  my  diligence  may  in 
time  probably  effect,  the  more  does  my  heart  distend  with  pride  and 
obstinacy.  I  feel  it  in  my  power  to  become  a  popular  writer.  I 
feel  it  in  my  power  to  refuse  the  poisonous  suffrage  of  a  public. 
My  own  being,  which  I  know  to  be,  becomes  of  more  consequence 
to  me  than  the  crowds  of  shadows  in  the  shape  of  men  and  women 
that  inhabit  a  kingdom.  The  soul  is  a  world  of  itself,  and  has 
enough  to  do  in  its  own  home.  Those  whom  1  know  already, 
and  who  have  gi-own  as  it  were  a  part  of  myself,  I  could  not  do 
without ;  but  for  the  rest  of  mankind,  they  are  as  much  a  dream 
to  me  as  Milton's  "  Hierarchies."  I  think  if  I  had  a  free  and 
healthy  and  lasting  organization  of  heart,  and  lungs  as  strong  as 
an  ox,  so  as  to  be  able  [to  bear]  unhurt  the  shock  of  extreme 
thought  and  sensation  without  weariness,  I  could  pass  my  life  very 
nearly  alone,  though  it  should  last  eighty  years.  But  I  feel  my 
body  too  weak  to  support  me  to  this  height ;  I  am  obliged  con- 
tinually to  check  myself,  and  be  nothing. 

It  would  be  vain  for  me  to  endeavor  after  a  more  reasonable 
manner  of  writing  to  you.  I  have  nothing  to  speak  of  but  my- 
self, and  what  can  I  say  but  what  I  feel  ?  If  you  should  have 
any  reason  to  regret  this  state  of  excitement  in  me,   I  will  turn 


200  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  tide  of  your  feelings  in  the  right  channel,  by  mentioning  that 
it  is  the  only  state  for  the  best  sort  of  poetry — that  is  all  I  care 
for,  all  I  live  for.  Forgive  me  for  not  filling  up  the  whole  sheet ; 
letters  become  so  irksome  to  me,  that  the  next  time  I  leave  Lon- 
don I  shall  petition  them  all  to  be  spared  to  me.  To  give  me 
credit  for  constancy,  and  at  the  same  time  waive  letter-writing, 
will  be  the  highest  indulgence  I  can  think  of. 

Ever  your  aflectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Winchester,  Wednesday  Evening. 
My  Dear  Dilke, 

Wiiatever  I  take  to,  for  the  time,  I  cannot  leave 
off  in  a  hurry  ;  letter-writing  is  the  go  now  ;  I  have  consumed  a 
quire  at  least.  You  must  give  me  credit,  now,  for  a  free  letter, 
when  it  is  in  reality  an  interested  one  on  two  points,  the  one  re- 
questive,  the  other  verging  to  the  pros  and  cons.  As  I  expect  they 
will  lead  me  to  seeing  and  conferring  with  you  for  a  short  time,  I 
shall  not  enter  at  all  upon  a  letter  I  have  lately  received  from 
George,  of  not  the  most  comfortable  intelligence,  but  proceed  to 
these  two  points,  which,  if  you  can  Hume  out  into  sections  and 
subsections,  for  my  edification,  you  will  oblige  me.  The  first  I 
shall  begin  upon  ;  the  other  will  follow  like  a  tail  to  a  comet.  I 
have  written  to  Brown  on  the  subject,  and  can  but  go  over  the 
same  ground  with  you  in  a  very  short  time,  it  not  being  more  in 
length  than  the  ordinary  paces  between  the  wickets.  It  concerns 
a  resolution  I  have  taken  to  endeavor  to  acquire  something  by 
temporary  writing  in  periodical  works.  You  must  agree  with  me 
how  unwise  it  is  to  keep  feeding  upon  hopes,  which  depending  so 
much  on  the  state  of  temper  and  imagination,  appear  gloomy  or 
bright,  near  or  afar  off,  just  as  it  happens.  Now  an  act  has  three 
parts — to  act,  to  do,  and  to  perform — I  mean  I  should  do  some- 
thing for  my  immediate  welfare.  Even  if  I  am  swept  away  like 
a  spider  from  a  drawing-room,  I  am  determined  to  spin — home- 
spun, any  thing  for  sale.  Yea,  I  will  traffic,  any  thing  but  mort- 
gage my  brain  to  Blackwood.  I  am  determined  not  to  lie  like  a 
dead  lump.  You  may  say  1  want  tact.  That  is  easily  acquired. 
You  may  be  up  to  the  slang  of  a  cock-pit  in  three  battles.     It  is 


JOHN  KEATS.  201 


fortunate  I  have  not,  before  this,  been  tempted  to  venture  on  the 
common.  I  should,  a  year  or  two  ago,  have  spoken  my  mind  on 
every  subject  with  the  utmost  simplicity.  I  hope  I  have  learned 
a  little  belter,  and  am  confident  I  shall  be  able  to  cheat  as  well  as 
any  literary  Jew  of  the  market,  and  shine  up  an  article  on  any 
thing,  without  much  knowledge  of  the  subject,  aye,  like  an  orange. 
I  would  willingly  have  recourse  to  other  means.  I  cannot ;  I  am 
fit  for  nothing  but  literature.  Wait  for  the  issue  of  this  tragedy  ? 
No :  there  cannot  be  greater  uncertainties,  east,  west,  north,  and 
south,  than  concerning  dramatic  composition.  How  many  months 
must  I  wait !  Had  I  not  better  begin  to  look  about  me  now  ?  If 
better  events  supersede  this  necessity,  what  harm  will  be  done  ? 
I  have  no  trust  whatever  on  poetry.  I  don't  wonder  at  it:  the 
marvel  is  to  me  how  people  read  so  much  of  it.  I  think  you  will 
see  the  reasonableness  of  my  plan.  To  forward  it,  I  purpose  liv- 
ing in  cheap  lodgings  in  town,  that  I  may  be  in  the  reach  of  books 
and  information,  of  which  there  is  here  a  plentiful  lack.  If  I  can 
[find]  any  place  tolerably  comfortable,  I  will  settle  myself  and 
fag  till  I  can  afford  to  buy  pleasure,  which,  if  [I]  never  can  afford, 
I  must  go  without.  Talking  of  pleasure,  this  moment  I  was 
writing  with  one  hand,  and  with  the  other  holding  to  my  mouth  a 
nectarine.  Good  God,  how  fine !  It  went  down  soft,  pulpy, 
slushy,  oozy — all  its  delicious  embonpoint  melted  down  my  throat 
like  a  large  beatified  strawberry.  Now  I  come  to  my  request. 
Should  you  like  me  for  a  neighbor  again?  Come,  plump  it  out, 
I  won't  blush.  I  should  also  be  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mrs.  Wy- 
lie,  which  I  should  be  glad  of,  though  that  of  course  does  not  in- 
fluence me.  Therefore  will  you  look  about  Rodney  Street  for  a 
couple  of  rooms  for  me — rooms  like  the  gallant's  legs  in  Massin- 
ger's  time,  "  as  good  as  the  times  allow,  Sir !"  I  have  written 
to-day  to  Reynolds,  and  to  Woodhouse.  Do  you  know  him  ?  He 
is  a  friend  of  Taylor's,  at  whom  Brown  has  taken  one  of  his  fun- 
ny odd  dislikes.  I'm  sure  he's  wrong,  because  Woodhouse  likes 
my  poetry — conclusive.  I  ask  your  opinion,  and  yet  I  must  say 
to  you,  as  to  him  (Brown),  that  if  you  have  any  thing  to  say 
against  it  I  shall  be  as  obstinate  and  heady  as  a  Radical.  By  the 
"  Examiners  "  coming  in  your  handwriting  you  must  be  in  town. 
They  have  put  me  into  spirits.     Notwithstanding  my  aristocratic 


202  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

temper,  I  cannot  help  being  very  much  pleased  with  the  present 
public  proceedings.  I  hope  sincerely  I  shall  be  able  to  put  a  mite 
of  help  to  the  liberal  side  of"  the  question  before  I  die.  If  you 
should  have  left  town  again  (for  your  holidays  cannot  be  up  yet), 
let  me  know  when  this  is  forwarded  to  you.  A  most  extraordi- 
nary mischance  has  befallen  two  letters  I  wrote  Brown — one  from 
London,  whither  I  was  obliged  to  go  on  business  for  George  ;  the 
other  from  this  place  since  my  return.  I  can't  make  it  out.  I 
am  excessively  sorry  for  it.  I  shall  hear  from  Brown  and  from 
you  almost  together,  for  I  have  sent  him  a  letter  to-day. 

Ever  your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 


Winchester,  Sejyt.  5,  1819. 
My  Dear  Taylor, 

This  morning  I  received  yours  of  the  2nd,  and  with 
it  a  letter  from  Hessey,  inclosing  a  bank  post  bill  of  j£30,  an  am- 
ple sum  I  assure  you — more  I  had  not  thought  of.  You  should 
not  have  delayed  so  long  in  Fleet  Street ;  leading  an  inactive  life 
as  you  did  was  breathing  poison :  you  will  find  the  country  air  do 
more  for  you  than  you  expect.  But  it  must  be  proper  country 
air.  You  must  choose  a  spot.  What  sort  of  a  place  is  Retford  ? 
You  should  have  a  dry,  gravelly,  barren,  elevated  country,  open 
to  the  currents  of  air,  and  such  a  place  is  generally  furnished  with 
the  finest  springs.  Tlie  neighborhood  of  a  rich,  inclosed,  fulsome, 
manured,  arable  land,  especially  in  a  valley,  and  almost  as  bad 
on  a  flat,  would  be  almost  as  bad  as  the  smoke  of  Fleet  Street. 
Such  a  place  as  this  was  Shanklin,  only  open  to  the  south-east, 
and  surrounded  by  hills  in  every  other  direction.  From  this 
south-east  came  the  damps  from  the  sea,  which,  having  no  egress, 
the  air  would  for  days  together  take  on  an  unhealthy  idiosyncra- 
sy altogether  enervating  and  weakening  as  a  city  smoke.  I  felt 
it  very  much.  Since  I  have  been  here  in  Winchester  I  have  been 
improving  in  health  :  it  is  not  so  confined,  and  there  is,  on  one 
side  of  the  city,  a  dry  chalky  down,  where  the  air  is  worth  six- 
pence a  pint.  So  if  you  do  not  get  better  at  Retford,  do  not  im- 
pute it  to  your  own  weakness  until  you  have  well  considered   the 


JOHN  KEATS.  203 


nature  of  the  air  and  soil — especially  as  Autumn  is  encroaching 
— for  the  Autumn  fog  over  a  rich  land  is  like  the  steam  from  cab- 
bage water.  What  makes  the  great  dillerence  between  valesmen, 
flatlandmen,  and  mountaineers?  The  cultivation  of  the  earth  in 
a  great  measure.  Our  health,  temperament,  and  disposition,  are 
taken  more  (notwithstanding  the  contradiction  of  the  history  of 
Cain  and  Abel)  from  the  air  we  breathe,  than  is  generally  imag- 
ined. See  tfie  difference  between  a  peasant  and  a  butcher.  I 
am  convinced  a  great  cause  of  it  is  the  difference  of  the  air  they 
breathe  :  the  one  takes  his  mingled  with  the  fume  of  slaughter, 
the  other  from  the  dank  exhalement  from  the  glebe ;  the  teeming 
damp  that  comes  up  from  the  plough-furrow  is  of  more  effect  in 
taming  the  fierceness  of  a  strong  man  than  his  labor.  Let  him 
be  mowing  furze  upon  a  mountain,  and  at  the  day's  end  his 
thoughts  will  run  upon  a  pick-axe  if  he  ever  had  handled  one  ; — 
let  him  leave  the  plough,  and  he  will  think  quietly  of  his  supper. 
Agriculture  is  the  tamer  of  men — the  steam  from  the  earth  is  like 
drinking  their  mother's  milk — it  enervates  their  nature.  Tliis 
appears  a  great  cause  of  the  imbecility  of  the  Chinese  :  and  if 
this  sort  of  atmosphere  is  a  mitigation  to  the  energies  of  a  strong 
man,  how  much  more  must  it  injure  a  weak  one,  unoccupied,  un- 
exercised ?  For  what  is  the  cause  of  so  many  men  maintaining 
a  good  state  in  cities,  but  occupation  ?  An  idle  man,  a  man  who 
is  not  sensitively  alive  to  self-interest,  in  a  city,  cannot  continue 
long  in  good  health.  This  is  easily  explained.  If  you  were  to 
walk  leisurely  through  an  unwholesome  path  in  the  fens,  with  a 
little  horror  of  them,  you  would  be  sure  to  have  your  ague.  But 
let  Macbeth  cross  the  same  path,  with  the  dagger  in  the  air  lead- 
ing him  on,  and  he  would  never  have  an  ague  or  anything  like  it. 
You  should  give  these  things  a  serious  consideration.  Notts,  I 
believe,  is  a  flat  country.  You  should  be  on  the  slope  of  one  of 
the  dry  barren  hills  in  Somersetshire.  I  am  convinced  there  is  as 
harmful  air  to  be  bi^eathed  in  the  country  as  in  town. 

I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you  for  your  letter.  Perhaps,  if  you 
had  had  strength  and  spirits  enough,  you  would  have  felt  offended 
by  my  offering  a  note  of  hand,  or,  rather,  expressed  it.  However, 
I  am  sure  you  will  give  me  credit  for  not  in  anywise  mistrusting 
you  ;  or  imagining  that  you  would   take  advantage  of  any  power 


204  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

I  might  give  you  over  me.  No,  it  proceeded  from  my  serious  re- 
solve not  to  be  a  gratuitous  borrower,  from  a  great  desire  to  be 
correct  in  money  matters,  to  have  in  my  desk  the  chronicles  of 
them  to  refer  to,  and  know  my  worldly  non-estate :  besides,  in 
case  of  my  death,  such  documents  would  be  but  just,  if  merely  as 
memorials  of  the  friendly  turns  I  had  done  to  me. 

Had  I  known  of  your  illness  I  should  not  have  written  in 
such  fiery  phrase  in  my  first  letter.  I  hope  that  shortly  you  will 
be  able  to  bear  six  times  as  much. 

Brown  likes  the  tragedy  very  much,  but  he  is  not  a  fit  judge 
of  it,  as  I  have  only  acted  as  midwife  to  his  plot,  and  of  course  he 
will  be  fond  of  his  child.  I  do  not  think  I  can  make  you  any  ex- 
tracts without  spoiling  the  effect  of  the  whole  when  you  come  to 
read  it.  I  hope  you  will  then  not  think  my  labor  misspent.  Since 
I  finished  it  I  have  finished  "  Lamia,"  and  am  now  occupied  in 
revising  "  St.  Agnes'  Eve,"  and  studying  Italian.  Ariosto  I  find 
as  diffuse,  in  parts,  as  Spenser.  1  understand  completely  the 
difference  between  them.  I  will  cross  the  letter  with  some  lines 
from  "  Lamia." 

Brown's  kindest  remembrances  to  you,  and  I  am  ever  your 
most  sincei'e  friend, 

John  Keats. 

I  shall  be  alone  here  for  three  weeks,  expecting  account  of 
your  health. 

Winchester,  22d  Sept.,  1819. 
My  Dear  Reynolds, 

I  was  very  glad  to  hear  from  Woodhouse  that  you 
would  meet  in  the  country.  I  hope  you  will  pass  some  pleasant 
time  together ;  which  I  wish  to  make  pleasanter  by  a  brace  of 
letters,  very  highly  to  be  estimated,  as  really  I  have  had  very  bad 
luck  with  this  sort  of  game  this  season.  I  "  kepen  in  solitarinesse," 
for  Brown  has  gone  a-visiting.  I  am  surprised  myself  at  the  plea- 
sure I  live  alone  in.  I  can  give  you  no  news  of  the  place  here, 
or  any  other  idea  of  it,  but  what  I  have  to  this  effect  writen  to 
George.  Yesterday,  I  say  to  him,  was  a  grand  day  for  Winches- 
ter.    They  elected  a  mayor.     It  was  indeed  high  time  the  place 


JOHN  KEATS.  205 


should  receive  some  sort  of  excitement.  There  was  nothing  goln^ 
on — all  asleep — not  an  old  maid's  sedan  returning  from  a  card- 
party  ;  and  if  any  old  women  got  tipsy  at  christenings  they  did 
not  expose  it  in  the  streets. 

The  side  streets  here  are  excessively  maiden-lady  like ;  the 
door-steps  always  fresh  from  the  flannel.  The  knockers  have  a 
staid,  serious,  nay,  almost  awful  quietness  about  them.  I  never 
saw  so  quiet  a  collection  of  lions'  and  rams'  heads.  The  doors 
[are]  most  part  black,  with  a  little  brass  handle  just  above  the 
keyhole,  so  that  in  Winchester  a  man  may  very  quietly  shut  him- 
self out  of  his  own  house. 

How  beautiful  the  season  is  now.  How  fine  the  air — a  tem- 
perate sharpness  about  it.  Really,  without  joking,  chaste  weather 
— Dian  skies.  I  never  liked  stubble-fields  so  much  as  now — aye, 
better  than  the  chilly  green  of  the  Spring.  Somehow,  a  stubble- 
field  looks  warm,  in  the  same  way  that  some  pictures  look  warm. 
This  struck  me  so  much  in  my  Sunday's  walk  that  I  composed 
upon  it,* 

"  Season  of  mists  and  mellow  fruitfulness ,"  (fcc. 

I  hope  you  are  better  employed  than  in  gaping  after  weather. 
I  have  been,  at  different  times,  so  happy  as  not  to  know  what 
weather  it  was.  No,  I  will  not  copy  a  parcel  of  verses.  I  always 
somehow  associate  Chatterton  with  Autumn.  He  is  the  purest 
writer  in  the  English  language.  He  has  no  French  idiom  or  par- 
ticles, like  Chaucer  ;  'tis  genuine  English  idiom  in  English  words. 
I  have  given  up  "  Hyperion," — there  were  too  many  Miltonic 
inversions  in  it — Miltonic  verse  cannot  be  written  but  in  an  artful, 
or,  rather,  artist's  humor.  I  wish  to  give  myself  up  to  other 
sensations.  English  ought  to  be  kept  up.  It  may  be  interesting 
to  you  to  pick  out  some  lines  from  "  Hyperion,"  and  put  a  mark, 
+,  to  the  false  beauty,  proceeding  from  art,  and  1,  2,  to  the  true 
voice  of  feeling.  Upon  my  soul,  'twas  imagination  ;  I  cannot 
make  the  distinction — every  now  and  then  there  is  a  Miltonic  in- 
tonation— but  I  cannot  make  the  division  properly.     The  fact  is,  1 

*  See  the  fine  lines,  "  To  Autumn,"  in  the  collected  works. 
10 


206  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


must  take  a  walk  ;  for  I  am  writing  a  long  letter  to  George,  and 
have  been  employed  at  it  all  the  morning.  You  will  ask,  have  I 
heard  from  George  ?  I  am  sorry  to  say,  not  the  best  news — 1 
hope  for  better.  This  is  the  reason,  among  others,  that  if  I  write 
to  you  it  must  be  in  such  a  scrap-like  way.  I  have  no  meridian 
to  date  interests  from,  or  measure  circumstances.  To-night  I  am 
all  in  a  mist :  I  scarcely  know  what's  what.  But  you,  knowing 
my  unsteady  and  vagarish  disposition,  will  guess  that  all  this  tur- 
moil will  be  settled  by  to-morrow  morning.  It  strikes  me  to-night 
that  I  have  led  a  very  odd  sort  of  life  for  the  two  or  three  last 
years — here  and  there,  no  anchor — I  am  glad  of  it.  If  you  can 
get  a  peep  at  Babbicomb  before  you  leave  the  country,  do.  I 
think  it  the  finest  place  I  have  seen,  or  is  to  be  seen  in  the  south. 
There  is  a  cottage  there  I  took  warm  water  at,  that  made  up  for 
the  tea.  I  have  lately  shirk'd  some  friends  of  ours,  and  I  advise 
you  to  do  the  same.  I  mean  the  blue-devils — I  am  never  at  home 
to  them.  You  need  not  fear  them  while  you  remain  in  Devon- 
shire. There  will  be  some  of  the  family  waiting  for  you  at  the 
coach-office — but  go  by  another  coach. 

I  shall  beg  leave  to  have  a  third  opinion  in  the  first  discussion 
you  have  with  Woodhouse — ^just  half-way  between  both.  You 
know  I  will  not  give  up  any  argument.  In  my  walk  to-day,  I 
stoop'd  under  a  railing  that  lay  across  my  path,. and  asked  myself 
"why  I  did  not  get  over;"  "Because,"  answered  I,  "no  one 
wanted  to  force  you  under."  I  would  give  a  guinea  to  be  a  rea- 
sonable man — good,  sound  sense — a  says-what-he-thinks-and-does- 
what-he-says-man — and  did  not  take  snuff".  They  say  men  near 
death,  however  mad  they  may  have  been,  come  to  their  senses :  I 
hope  I  shall  here  in  this  letter ;  there  is  a  decent  space  to  be  very 
sensible  in — many  a  good  proverb  has  been  in  less — nay,  I  have 
heard  of  the  statutes  at  large  being  changed  into  the  statutes  at 
small,  and  printed  for  a  watch-paper. 

Your  sisters,  by  this  time,  must  have  got  the  Devonshire  "  ees" 
— short  ees — you  know  'em  ;  they  are  the  prettiest  ees  in  the 
language.  O,  how  I  admire  the  middle-sized  delicate  Devonshire 
girls  of  about  fifteen.  There  was  one  at  an  inn  door  holding  a 
quartern  of  brandy  ;  the  very  thought  of  her  kept  me  warm  a 


JOHN  KEATS.  207 


whole  stage — and   a  sixteen-inilcr  too.     "  You'll  pardon  mo  for 
being  jocular.'"' 

Ever  your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Sept.  23,  1819. 
To  Mr.  Brown. 

"  Now  I  am  going  to  enter  on  the  sul)ject  itself.  It  is  quite 
time  I  should  set  myself  doing  something,  and  live  no  longer  upon 
hopes.  I  have  never  yet  exerted  myself.  I  am  getting  into  an 
idle-minded,  vicious  way  of  life,  almost  content  to  live  upon  others. 
In  no  period  of  my  life  have  I  acted  with  any  self-will,  but  in 
throwing  up  the  apothecary  profession.     That  I  do  not  repent  of. 

Look  at ,  if  he  was  not  in  the  law,  he  would  be  acquiring,  by 

his  abilities,  something  towards  his  support.     My  occupation  is 
entirely  literary :  I  will  do  so,  too.     I  will  write,  on  the  liberal 
side  of  the  question,  for  whoever  will  pay  me.     I  have  not  known 
yet  what  it  is  to  be  diligent.     I  purpose  living  in  town  in  a  cheap 
lodging,  and  endeavoring,  for  a  beginning,  to  get  the  theatricals  of 
some  paper.     When  I  can   afford   to  compose  deliberate  poems,  I 
will.    I  shall  be  in  expectation  of  an  answer  to  this.     Look  on  my 
side  of  tlie  question.     I  am   convinced  I  am  right.     Suppose  the 
tragedy  should  succeed, — there  will  be  no  harm  done.     And  here 
I  will   take   an  opportunity  of  making   a  remark  or  two  on  our 
friendship,  and  on  all  your  good  offices  to  me.     I  have  a  natural 
timidity  of  mind  in  these  matters;  liking  better  to  take  the  feel- 
ing between  us  for  granted,  than  to  speak  of  it.     But,  good  God  ! 
what  a  short  while  you  have  know^n  me !     I  feel  it  a  sort  of  duty 
thus  to  recapitulate,  however  unpleasant  it  may  be  to  you.     You 
have   been  living  for  others  more  than   any  man  I  know.     This 
is  a  vexation  to  me,  because  it  has  been  depriving  you,  in  the 
very  prime  of  your  life,  of  pleasures  which   it  was  your  duty  to 
procure.  As  I  am  sjjeaking  in  general  terms,  this  may  appear  non- 
sense ;  you,  perhaps,  will  not  understand  it ;  but  if  you  can  go 
over,  day  by  day,  any  month  of  the  last  year,  you  will  know  what 
I  mean.     On  the  whole,  however,  this  is  a  subject  that  I  cannot 
express  myself  upon.     I  speculate  upon  it  frequently;  and,  be- 


208  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

lieve  me,  the  end  of  my  speculations  is  always  an  anxiety  for 
your  happiness.  Tiiis  anxiety  will  not  be  one  of  the  least  incite- 
ments to  the  plan  I  purpose  pursuing.  I  had  got  into  a  habit  of  mind 
of  looking  towards  you  as  a  help  in  all  difficulties.  This  very 
habit  would  be  the  parent  of  idleness  and  difficulties.  You  will 
see  it  is  a  duty  I  owe  myself  to  break  the  neck  of  it.  I  do  nothing 
for  my  subsistence — make  no  exertion.  At  the  end  of  another 
year  you  shall  applaud  me,  not  for  verses,  but  for  conduct.  While 
I  have  some  immediate  cash,  I  had  better  settle  myself  quietly, 
and  fag  on  as  others  do.  I  shall  apply  to  Hazlitt,  who  knows  the 
market  as  well  as  any  one,  for  something  to  bring  me  in  a  few 
pounds  as  soon  as  possible.  I  shall  not  suffi^r  my  pride  to  hinder 
me.  The  whisper  may  go  round  ;  I  shall  not  hear  it.  If  I  can 
get  an  article  in  the  'Edinburgh,'  I  will.  One  must  not  be  deli- 
cate. Nor  let  this  disturb  you  longer  than  a  moment.  I  look 
forward,  with  a  good  hope  that  we  shall  one  day  be  passing  free, 
untrammeled,  unanxious  time  together.  That  can  never  be  if  I 
continue  a  dead  lump.  I  shall  be  expecting  anxiously  an  answer 
from  you.  If  it  does  not  arrive  in  a  few  days  this  will  have  mis- 
carried, and   I  shall   come  straight  to before  I  go  to  town, 

which  you,  I  am  sure,  will  agree  had  better  be  done  while  I  still 
have  some  ready  cash.  By  the  middle  of  October  I  shall  expect 
you  in  London.  We  will  then  sit  at  the  theatres.  If  you  have 
any  thing  to  gainsay,  I  shall  be  even  as  the  deaf  adder  which 
stoppeth  her  ears." 

On  the  same  day  he  wrote  another  letter,  having  received  one 
from  Mr.  Brown  in  the  interval.     He  again  spoke  of  liis  purpose. 

"  Do  not  suffijr  mc  to  disturb  you  unpleasantly  :  I  do  not  mean 
that  you  should  not  suffer  mc  to  occupy  your  thoughts,  but  to  oc- 
cupy them  pleasantly ;  for,  I  assure  you,  I  am  as  far  from  being 
unhappy  as  possible.  Imaginary  grievances  have  always  been 
more  my  torment  than  real  ones.  You  know  this  well.  Real 
ones  will  never  have  any  other  effect  upon  me  than  to  stimulate 
me  to  get  out  of  or  avoid  them.  This  is  easily  accounted  for. 
Our  imaginary  woes  are  conjured  up  by  our  passions,  and  are 
fostered   by  passionate  feeling  :  our  real   ones  come   themselves. 


JOHN  KEATS.  289 


and  are  opposed  by  an  abstract  exertion  of  mind.  Real  griev- 
ances are  displacers  of  passion.  The  imaginary  nail  a  man  down 
for  a  suticrer,  as  on  a  cross  ;  the  real  spur  him  up  into  an  agent. 
1  wish,  at  one  view,  you  would  see  my  heart  towards  you.  'Tis 
only  from  a  high  tone  of  feeling  that  I  can  put  that  word  upon 
paper — out  of  poetry.  I  ought  to  have  waited  for  your  answer  to 
my  last  before  I  wrote  you  this.     I  felt,  however,  compelled  to 

make  a  rejoinder  to  yours.     I  had  written  to on  the  subject 

of  my  last,  I  scarcely  know  whether  I  shall  send  my  letter  now. 
I  think  he  would  approve  of  my  plan ;  it  is  so  evident.  Nay,  I 
am  convinced,  out  and  out,  that  by  prosing  for  a  while  in  periodi- 
cal works  I  may  maintain  myself  decently." 

The  gloomy  tone  of  this  correspondence  soon  brought  Mr. 
Brown  to  Winchester.  Up  to  that  period  Keats  had  always  ex- 
pressed himself  most  averse  to  writing  for  any  periodical  publica- 
tion. The  short  contributions  to  the  "  Champion  "  were  rather 
acts  of  friendship  than  literary  labors.  But  now  Mr.  Brown, 
knowing  what  his  pecuniary  circumstances  were,  and  painfully 
conscious  that  the  time  spent  in  the  creation  of  those  works  which 
were  destined  to  be  the  delight  and  solace  of  thousands  of  his 
fellow  creatures,  must  be  unprofitable  to  him  in  procuring  the 
necessities  of  life,  and,  above  all,  estimating  at  its  due  value  that 
spirit  of  independence  which  shrinks  from  materializing  the  obli- 
gations of  friendship  into  daily  bread,  gave  every  encouragement 
to  these  designs,  and  only  remonstrated  against  the  project  of  the 
following  note,  both  on  account  of  the  pain  he  would  himself  suffer 
from  the  privation  of  Keats's  society,  but  from  the  belief  that  the 
scheme  of  life  would  not  be  successful. 

Winchester,  Oct.  1st,  [1819.] 
My  Dear  Dilke, 

For  sundry  reasons  which  I  will  explain  to  you  when  I 
come  to  town,  I  have  to  request  you  will  do  me  a  great  favor,  as 
I  must  call  it,  knowing  how  great  a  bore  it  is.  That  your  imagi- 
nation may  not  have  time  to  take  too  great  an  alarm,  I  state  im- 
mediately that  I  want  you  to  hire  me  a  couple  of  rooms  (a  sitting- 
room  and  bed-room  for  myself  alone)  in  Westminster.     Quietness 


210  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

and  cheapness  are  the  essentials ;  but  as  I  shall,  with  Brown,  be 
returned  by  next  Friday,  you  cannot,  in  that  space,  have  sufficient 
time  to  make  any  choice  selection,  and  need  not  be  very  particu- 
lar, as  I  can,  when  on  the  spot,  suit  myself  at  leisure.  Brown 
bids  me  remind  you  not  to  send  the  "  Examiners  "  after  the  third. 
Tell  Mrs.  D.  I  am  obliged  to  her  for  the  late  ones,  which  I  see 
are  directed  in  her  hand.  Excuse  this  mere  business-letter,  for  I 
assure  you  I  have  not  a  syllable  at  hand  on  any  subject  in  the 
world. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

The  friends  returned  to  town  together,  and  Keats  took  posses- 
sion of  his  new  abode.  But  he  had  miscalculated  his  own  powers 
of  endurance :  the  enforced  absence  from  his  friends  was  too 
much  for  him,  and  a  still  stronger  impulse  drew  him  back  again 
to  Hampstead.     She,  whose  name 

"  Was  ever  on  his  lips 
But  never  on  his  tongue," 

exercised  too  mighty  a  control  over  his  being  for  him  to  remain  at 
a  distance,  which  was  neither  absence  nor  presence,  and  he  soon 
returned  to  where  at  least  he  could  rest  his  eyes  on  her  habitation, 
and  enjoy  each  chance  opportunity  of  her  society.  I  find  a  frag- 
ment written  about  this  date,  and  under  this  inspiration,  but  it  is 
still  an  interesting  "study  of  the  human  heart,  to  see  how  few 
traces  remain  in  his  outward  literary  life  of  that  passion  which 
was  his  real  existence. 


TO . 

What  can  I  do  to  drive  away 

Remembrance  from  my  eyes?  for  they  have  seen, 

Aye,  an  hour  ago,  my  brilliant  Queen  ! 

Touch  has  a  memory.     0  say,  love,  say, 

What  can  I  do  to  kill  it  and  be  free 

In  my  old  liberty  ? 

When  every  fair  one  that  I  saw  was  fair. 

Enough  to  catch  me  in  but  half  a  snare. 

Not  keep  me  there  : 


JOHN  KEATS.  211 


When,  howe'er  poor  or  particolor'd  things, 

My  muse  had  wings, 

And  ever  ready  was  to  take  her  course 

Whither  I  bent  her  force, 

Unintellectual,  yet  divine  to  me  ; — 

Divine,  I  say  ! — What  sea-bird  o'er  the  sea 

Is  a  philosopher  the  while  he  goes 

Winging  along  where  the  great  water  throes  ? 

How  shall  I  do 

To  get  anew 

Those  moulted  feathers,  and  so  mount  once  more 

Above,  above 

The  reach  of  fluttering  Love, 

And  make  him  cower  lowly  while  I  soar  1 

Shall  I  gulp  wine  1     No,  that  is  vulgarism, 

A  heresy  and  schism. 

Foisted  into  the  canon  law  of  love  ; — 

No, — wine  is  only  sweet  to  happy  men  ; 

More  dismal  cares 

Seize  on  me  unawares, — 

Where  shall  I  learn  to  get  my  peace  again  ? 

To  banish  thoughts  of  that  most  hateful  land, 

Dungeoner  of  my  friends,  that  wicked  strand 

Where  they  were  wreck'd  and  live  a  wrecked  life ; 

That  monstrous  region,  whose  dull  rivers  pour. 

Ever  from  their  sordid  urns  unto  the  shore, 

Unown'd  of  any  weedy-haired  gods  ; 

Whose  winds,  all  zephyrless,  hold  scourging  rods, 

Iced  in  the  great  lakes,  to  afflict  mankind  ; 

Whese  rank-grown  forests,  frosted,  black,  and  blind. 

Would  fright  a  Dryad  ;  whose  harsh  herbaged  meads 

Make  lean  and  lank  the  starv'd  ox  while  he  feeds  ; 

There  bad  flowers  have  no  scent,  birds  no  sweet  song, 

And  great  unerring  Nature  once  seems  wrong. 

O,  for  some  sunny  spell 

To  dissipate  the  shadows  of  this  hell  I 

Say  they  are  gone, — with  the  new  dawning  light 

Steps  forth  my  lady  bright ! 

O,  let  me  once  more  rest 

My  soul  upon  that  dazzling  breast  I 

Let  once  again  these  aching  arms  be  placed, 

The  tender  gaolers  of  thy  waist ! 


212  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

And  let  me  feel  that  warm  breath  htve  and  there 

To  spread  a  rapture  in  my  very  hair, — 

O,  the  sweetness  of  the  pain  ! 

Give  me  those  lips  again  ! 

Enough  !  Enough  !  it  is  enough  for  me 

To  dream  of  thee  ! 


Wentworth  Place,  Hampstead,  lllh  Nov.  [1819.] 
My  Dear  Taylor, 

I  have  come  to  a  determination  not  to  publish  any  thing 
I  have  now  ready  written  ;  but,  for  all  that,  to  publish  a  poem  before 
long,  and  that  I  hope  to  make  a  fine  one.  As  the  marvelous  is 
the  most  enticing,  and  the  surest  guarantee  of  harmonious  numbers, 
I  have  been  endeavoring  to  persuade  myself  to  untether  Fancy, 
and  to  let  her  rnanage  for  herself  I  and  myself  cannot  agree  about 
this  at  all.  Wonders  are  no  wonders  to  me.  I  am  more  at  home 
amongst  men  and  women.  I  would  rather  read  Chaucer  and 
Ariosto.  The  little  dramatic  skill  I  may  as  yet  have,  however 
badly  it  might  show  in  a  drama,  would,  I  think,  be  sufficient  for  a 
poem.  I  wish  to  diffuse  the  coloring  of  St.  Agnes'  Eve  through- 
out a  poem  in  which  character  and  sentiment  would  be  the  figures 
to  such  drapery.  Two  or  three  such  poems,  if  God  should  spare 
me,  written  in  the  course  of  the  next  six  years,  would  be  a  famous 
Gradus  ad  Parnassum  altissimum.  I  mean  they  would  nerve  me 
up  to  the  writing  of  a  kw  fine  plays — my  greatest  ambition,  when 
I  do  feel  ambitious.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  is  very  seldom.  The 
subject  we  have  once  or  twice  talked  of  appears  a  promising  one 
— the  Earl  of  Leicester's  history.  I  am  this  morning  reading 
Holingshed's  "  Elizabeth."  You  had  some  books  awhile  ago,  you 
promised  to  send  me,  illustrative  of  my  subject.  If  you  can  lay 
hold  of  them,  or  any  other  which  may  be  serviceable  to  me,  I 
know  you  will  encourage  my  low-spirited  muse  by  sending  them, 
or  rather  by  letting  me  know  where  our  errand-cart  man  shall 
call  with  my  little  box.  I  will  endeavor  to  set  myself  selfishly 
at  work  on  this  poem  that  is  to  be. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 


JOHN  KEATS.  213 


Abou  tliis  time  he  wrote  this  to  liis  brother  George  : — 

"From  the  liino  you  left  us  our  friends  say  I  have  altered  so 
completely  I  am  not  the  same  person.  I  dare  say  you  have 
altered  also.  JMine  is  not  the  same  hand  I  clenched  at  Hammond.* 
We  are  like  the  relic  garments  of  a  saint,  the  same  and  not  the 
same  ;  for  the  careful  monks  patch  it  and  patch  it  till  there  is  not 
a  thread  of  the  original  in  it,  and  still  they  show  it  for  St.  Antho- 
ny's shirt.  This  is  the  reason  wi)y  men  who  have  been  bosom- 
friends  for  a  number  of  years  afterwards  meet  coldly,  neither  of 
them  know  why.  Some  think  I  have  lost  that  poetic  fire  and 
ardor  they  say  I  once  had.  The  fact  is,  I  perhaps  have,  but 
instead  of  that  I  hope  I  shall  substitute  a  more  thoughtful  and 
quiet  power.  I  am  more  contented  to  read  and  think,  but  seldom 
haunted  with  ambitious  thoughts.  I  am  scarcely  content  to  write 
the  best  verse  from  tlie  fever  they  leave  behind.  I  want  to  com- 
pose without  this  fever ;  I  hope  I  shall  one  day. 

"  You  cannot  imagine  how  well  I  can  live  alone.  I  told  the 
servant  to-day  I  was  not  at  home  to  any  one  that  called.  I  am 
not  sure  how  I  shall  endure  loneliness  and  bad  weather  at 
the  same  time.  It  is  beautiful  weather  now.  I  walk  for  an 
hour  every  day  before  dinner.  My  dear  sister,  I  have  all  the 
"Examiners"  ready  for  you.  I  will  pack  them  up  when  the 
business  with  Mr.  Abbey  comes  to  a  conclusion.  1  have  dealt  out 
your  best  wishes  like  a  pack  of  cards,  but,  being  always  given  to 
cheat,  I  have  turned  up  ace.  You  see  I  am  making  game  of  you. 
I  see  you  are  not  happy  in  America.  As  for  pun-making,  I  wish 
it  were  as  profitable  as  pin-making.  There  is  but  little  business 
of  that  sort  going  on  now.  We  struck  for  wages  like  the  Man- 
chester weavers,  but  to  no  purpose,  for  we  arc  all  out  of  employ. 
I  am  more  lucky  than  some,  you  see,  as  I  have  an  opportunity 
of  exporting  a  pun, — getting  into  a  little  foreign  trade,  which  is  a 
comfortable  thing.  You  have  heard  of  Hook  the  farce-writer. 
Horace  Smith  was  asked  if  lie  knew  him.  '  Oh  yes,'  says  he, 
'Hook  and  I  are  very  intimate.'  Brown  has  been  taking 
French  lessons  at  tiie  cheap  rate  of  tvvo-and-sixpence  a  page,  and 

*  The  surgeon  to  wlioin  he  was  apprenticed. 
10* 


214  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


Reynolds  observed,  '  Gad,  the  man  sells  his  lessons  so  cheap,  he 
must  have  stolen  them.'  I  wish  you  could  get  change  for  a  pun 
in  silver  currency,  and  get  with  three-and-a-half  every  night  in 
Drury  pit." 


In  the  beginning  of  the  winter  George  Keats  suddenly  ap- 
peared in  England,  but  remained  only  for  a  short  period.  On 
his  arrival  in  America,  with  his  wife,  he  found  that  their  limited 
means  required  an  immediate  retirement  into,  what  were  then, 
the  solitudes  of  the  far  West,  but  which  the  labor  of  enterprising 
men  has  now  peopled  with  life  and  planted  with  civilization. 
From  Philadelphia  these  two  children  of  the  old  world,  and  nearly 
children  in  life,  (she  was  just  sixteen,)  proceeded  to  Pittsburgh 
and  descended  the  Ohio  to  Cincinnati.  Down  that  beautiful  river, 
then  undisturbed  by  the  panting  of  the  steamboat  or  the  tumult  of 
inhabited  shores,  their  lonely  boat  found  its  way  to  Cincinnati, 
where  they  resided  for  some  time.  George  Keats  paid  a  visit 
shortly  after  to  Kentucky,  where  he  lived  in  the  same  house  with 
Audubon  the  naturalist,  who,  seeing  him  one  day  occupied  in 
chopping  a  log,  after  watching  him  with  a  curious  interest,  ex- 
claimed, "  You  will  do  Well  in  this  country  ;  I  could  chop  that 
log  in  ten  minutes ;  you  have  taken  near  an  hour ;  but  your  per- 
sistence is  worth  more  than  my  expertness."  A  boat  in  which 
he  invested  his  money  completely  failed  as  a  speculation,  and  his 
voyage  to  England  seems  to  have  been  undertaken  in  the  hope  of 
raising  capital  for  some  more  successful  venture.  I  am  unable 
to  determine  whether  he  took  back  with  him  any  portion  of  what 
remained  of  John's  fortune,  but  he  did  receive  his  share  of  his 
brother  'J  om's  property,  and  he  may  possibly  have  repaid  himself 
for  what  lie  had  spent  for  John  out  of  John's  share.  John's  pro- 
fessional education  had  been  so  expensive  that  it  only  required  a 
certain  amount  of  that  carelessness  in  money-matters  incidental 
to  men  of  higher  natures  to  account  for  the  continual  embarrass- 
ment in  which  he  found  himself,  without  having  indulged  in  any 
profligate  habits.  Tom's  long  sickness  was  also  a  great  expense 
to  the  family,  so  that  the  assistance  of  the  more  prudent  and  for- 
tunate brother  was  frequently  required  to  make  u^^fc|ficiencies. 


JOHN  KEATS.  215 


This  was,  no  doubt,  the  reason  why,  out  of  the  llOOZ.  left  by 
Tom,  George  received  440/.,  and  John  little  more  than  200/. 
When  George  returned  the  second  time  to  America  he  certainly 
left  his  brother's  finances  in  a  deplorable  state ;  it  is  probable  he 
was  not  aware  how  very  small  a  sum  remained  for  John's  sub- 
sistence, or  it  would  have  been  hardly  justifiable  for  him  to  have 
repaid  himself  any  portion  of  what  he  had  advanced,  except  he 
was  convinced  that  whatever  he  did  take  would  be  so  reproduc- 
tive that  it  was  indisputably  the  best  thing  to  be  done  with  the 
money  at  the  time,  whatever  was  to  be  its  ultimate  destination. 
The  subject  was  so  painful  a  one,  and  the  increasing  melancholy, 
both  physical  and  moral,  of  Keats  so  manifest,  that  there  can  be 
no  ground  for  discrediting  his  brother's  positive  assertion,  that, 
when  he  left  London,  he  had  not  the  courage  to  lay  before  him 
the  real  state  of  their  affairs,  but  that  he  kept  to  the  pleasing  side 
of  things,  and  encouraged  him  in  the  belief  that  the  American 
speculation  would  produce  enough  to  restore  both  of  them  to  com- 
fortable circumstances.  At  the  same  time  it  might  well  be  per- 
mitted to  John's  friends,  who  did  not  know  the  details  of  the 
affair,  to  be  indignant  at  the  state  of  almost  destitution  to  which 
so  noble  a  man  was  reduced,  while  they  believed  that  his  brother 
in  America  had  the  means  of  assisting  him.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  after  Keats's  death,  when  George  was  ready  to  give  the 
fullest  explanation  of  the  circumstances,  when  the  legal  admi- 
nistration of  John's  efTects  showed  that  no  debts  were  owing  to 
the  estate,  and  when,  without  the  least  obligation,  he  offered  to  do 
his  utmost  to  liquidate  his  brotlior"s  engagements,  it  was  only 
just  to  acknowledge  that  they  had  been  deceived  by  appearances, 
and  that  they  fully  acquitted  him  of  unfratcrnal  and  ungenerous 
conduct.  Their  accusations  rankled  long  and  bitterly  in  his 
mind,  and  were  the  subject  of  a  frequent  correspondence  with  his 
friends  in  England.  I  have  extracted  the  following  portion  of  a 
letter,  dated  "  Louisville,  April  20th,  1825,"  as  an  earnest  ex- 
pression of  his  feelings,  and  also  as  giving  an  interesting  delinea- 
tion of  the  Poet's  character,  by  one  who  knew  him  so  well :  and 
I  am  glad  to  find  such  a  confirmation  of  what  has  been  so  often 
stated  in  these  pages,  that  the  faults  of  Keats's  disposition  were 
precisely  the  contrary  of  those  attributed  to  him  by  common 
opinion. 


216  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Louisville,  April  20,  1825. 
"         *         *         *  Your  letter  has  in  some  measure  relieved 

my  mind  of  a  load  that  has  sorely  pressed  for  years.  I  felt  inno- 
cent of  the  unfeeling,  mean  conduct  imputed  to  me  by  some  of  my 
brother's  friends,  and  knew  that  the  knowledge  of  the  facts  would 
soon  set  that  to  rights ;  but  I  could  not  rest  while  under  the  im- 
pression that  he  really  suffered  through  my  not  forwarding  him 
money  at  the  time  when  I  promised,  but  had  not  the  power.  Your 
saying,  '  that  he  knew  nothing  of  want,  either  of  friends  or  money,' 
and  giving  proofs  of  the  truth  of  it,  made  me  breathe  freely — 
enabled  me  to  cherish  his  memory,  without  the  feeling  of  having 
caused  him  misery,  however  unavoidably,  while  a  living  Friend 
and  Brother.  I  do  not  doubt  but  that  he  complained  of  me  ;  al- 
though he  was  the  noblest  fellow,  whose  soul  was  ever  open  to  my 
inspection,  his  nervous,  morbid  temperament  at  times  led  him  to 
misconstrue  the  motives  of  his  best  friends.  I  have  been  instru- 
mental times  innumerable  in  correcting  erroneous  impressions  so 
formed  of  those  very  persons  who  have  been  most  ready  to  believe 
the  stories  lately  circulated  against  me,  and  1  almost  believe  that 
if  I  had  remained  his  companion,  and  had  the  means,  as  I  had  the 
wish,  to  have  devoted  my  life  to  his  fame  and  happiness,  he  might 
have  been  living  at  this  hour.  His  temper  did  not  unfold  itself  to 
you,  his  friend,  until  the  vigor  of  his  mind  was  somewhat  impaired, 
and  he  no  longer  possessed  the  power  to  resist  the  pettishncss  he 
formerly  considered  he  had  no  right  to  trouble  his  friends  with. 
From  the  time  we  were  boys  at  school,  where  we  loved,  jangled, 
and  fought  alternately,  until  we  separated  in  1818,  I  in  a  great 
measure  relieved  him  by  continual  sympathy,  explanation,  and 
inexhaustible  spirits  and  good  humor,  from  many  a  bitter  fit  of 
hypochondriasm.  He  avoided  teasing  any  one  with  his  miseries 
but  Tom  and  myself,  and  often  asked  our  forgiveness  ;  venting 
and  discussing  them  gave  him  relief  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
he  did  not  receive  the  most  indulgent  attention  from  his  many  de- 
voted friends;  on  the  contrary,  I  shall  ever  look  with  admiration 
on  the  exertions  made  for  his  comfort  and  happiness  by  his  nume- 
rous friends.  No  one  in  England  understood  his  character  per- 
fectly but  poor  Tom,  and  he  had  not  the  power  to  divert  his  fre- 
quent melancholy,  and  eventually  increased  his  disease  most  fear- 


JOHN  KEATS.  217 


fully  by  the  horrors  of  his  own  lingering  death.  If  I  did  not  feel 
fully  persuaded  that  my  motive  was  to  acquire  an  independence 
to  support  us  all  in  case  of  necessity,  I  never  should  forgive  my- 
self for  leaving  him.  Some  extraordinary  exertion  was  necessary 
to  retrieve  our  affairs  from  the  gradual  decline  they  were  sutler- 
ing.  That  exertion  I  made,  whether  wisely  or  not,  future  events 
had  to  decide.  After  all,  Blackwood  and  the  Quarterly,  asso- 
ciated with  our  family  disease,  consumption,  were  ministers  of 
death  sufficiently  venomous,  cruel,  and  deadly,  to  have  consigned 
one  of  less  sensibility  to  a  premature  grave.  I  have  consumed 
many  hours  in  devising  means  to  punish  those  literary  gladiators, 
but  am  always  brought  to  the  vexing  conclusion  that  they  are  in- 
vulnerable to  one  of  my  prowess.  Has  much  been  said  in  John's 
defence  against  those  libelers  both  of  his  character  and  writings  ? 
His  writings  were  fair  game,  and  liable  to  be  assailed  by  a  sneak- 
ing poacher,  but  his  character  as  represented  by  Blackwood  was 
not.  A  good  cudgeling  should  have  been  his  reward  if  he  had 
been  within  my  reach.  John  was  the  very  soul  of  courage  and 
manliness,  and  as  much  like  the  Holy  Ghost  as  Johnny  Keats.  I 
am  much  indebted  for  the  interest  you  have  taken  in  my  vindica- 
tion, and  will  observe  further  for  your  satisfaction,  that  Mr.  Abbey, 
who  had  the  management  of  our  money  concerns,  in  a  letter  lately 
received,  expressed  himself  '  satisfied  that  my  statement  of  the 
acccount  between  John  and  me  was  correct.'  He  is  the  only  per- 
son who  is  in  possession  of  data  to  refute  or  confirm  my  story. 
My  not  having  written  to  you  seems  to  have  been  advanced  as  a 
proof  of  my  worthlessness.  If  it  prove  any  thing,  it  proves  my 
humility,  for  I  can  assure  you,  if  I  had  known  you  felt  one-half 
the  interest  in  my  fate  unconnected  with  my  brother  it  appears 
you  did,  the  explanation  would  have  been  made  when  I  first  be- 
came acquainted  there  was  a  necessity  for  it. — I  should  never 
have  given  up  a  communication  with  the  only  spirits  in  existence 
who  are  congenial  to  me,  and  at  the  same  time  know  me.  Un- 
derstand me,  when  I  f;uled  to  write,  it  was  not  from  a  diminished 
respect  or  friendliness  towards  you,  but  under  the  impression  that 
I  had  moved  out  of  your  circle,  leaving  but  faint  traces  that  I  had 
ever  existed  within  it." 


218  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Soon  after  George's  departure,  Keats  wrote  to  his  sister-in-law, 
and  there  is  certainly  nothing  in  the  letter  betokening  any  dimi- 
nution of  his  liveliness  or  sense  of  enjoyment.  He  seems,  on  the 
contrary,  to  regard  his  brother's  voyage  in  no  serious  light — pro- 
bably anticipating  a  speedy  reunion,  and  with  pleasant  plans  for  a 
future  that  never  was  to  come.  But  these  loving  brothers  had 
now  met  and  parted  for  the  last  time,  and  this  gay  letter  remains 
the  last  record  of  a  cheerful  and  hopeful  nature  that  was  about  to 
be  plunged  into  the  darkness  of  pain  and  death,  and  of  an  affection 
which  space  could  not  diminish,  and  which  time  preserved,  till 
after  many  years  of  honevSt,  useful,  and  laborious  life,  he  who  re- 
mained, also  past  away,  transmitting  to  other  generations  a  name 
that  genius  has  illustrated  above  the  blazon  of  ordinary  nobilities. 

My  Dear  Sister, 

By  the  time  you  receive  this  your  troubles  will  be  over, 
and  George  have  returned  to  you.  On  Henry's  marriage  there 
was  a  piece  of  bride's  cake  sent  me,  but  as  it  missed  its  way,  I 
suppose  the   bearer  was  a  conjurer,  and  wanted   it   for  his  own 

private  use.     Last  Sunday  George  and  I  dined  at  .     Your 

mother,  with  Charles,  were  there,  and  fool  L ,  who  sent  the 

sly  disinterested  shawl  to  Miss  M ,  with  his  own  heathen  name 

engraved  in  the  middle  of  it.  The  evening  before  last  we  had  a 
piano- forte  dance  at  Mrs.  Dilke's ;  there  was  little  amusement  in 
the  room,  but  a  Scotchman  to  hate :  some  persons  you  must  have 
observed  have  a  most  unpleasant  effect  on  you,  when  speaking  in 
profile  :  this  Scot  is  the  most  accomplished  fellow  in  this  way  I 
ever  met  with  :  the  effect  was  complete  ;  it  went  down  like  a  dose 
of  bitters,  and  I  hope  will  improve  my  digestion.  At  Taylor's  too 
there  was  a  Scotchman,  but  he  was  not  so  bad,  for  he  was  as  clean 
as  he  could  get  himself.  George  has  introduced  an  American  to 
us :  I  like  him  in  a  moderate  way.  I  told  him  I  hated  English- 
men, as  they  were  the  only  men  I  knew.  He  does  not  understand 
this.  Who  would  be  Braggadocio  to  Johnny  Bull  ?  Johnny's 
house  is  his  castle,  and  a  precious  dull  castle  it  is:  how  many 
dull  castles  there  are  in  so-and-so  crescent !  I  never  wish  myself 
a  general  visitor  and  newsmonger,  but  when  1  write  to  you — I 
should  then,  for  a  day  or  two,  like  to  have  the  knowledge  of  that 


JOHN  KEATS.  219 


L ,  for  instance ;  of  all  the  people  of  a  wide  acquaiiitancj  to 

tell  you  about,  only  let  me  have  his  knowledge  of  family  affairs, 
and  I  would  set  them  in  a  proper  light,  but  bless  me,  I  never  go 
any  M'here. 

My  pen  is  no  more  garrulous  than  my  tongue.  Any  third 
person  would  think  I  was  addressing  myself  to  a  lover  of  scandal, 
but  I  know  you  do  not  like  scandal,  but  you  love  fun  ;  and  if 
scandal  happen  to  be  fun,  that  is  no  fault  of  ours.  The  best 
thing  I  have  heard  is  your  shooting,  for  it  seems  you  follow  the 
gun.  I  like  your  brothers  the  more  I  know  of  them,  but  I  dislike 
mankind  in  general.  Whatever  people  on  the  other  side  of  the 
question  may  say,  they  cannot  deny  that  they  are  always  surpris- 
ed at  a  good  action,  and  never  at  a  bad  one.  I  am  glad  you 
have  doves  in  America.  "  Gertrude  of  Wyoming,"  and  Birk- 
beck's  book,  should  be  bound  together  as  a  couple  of  decoy- 
duck  j;  one  is  almost  as  practical  as  the  other.  I  have  been  sit- 
ting in  the  sun  while  I  wrote  this,  until  it  is  become  quite  oppres- 
sive:  the  Vulcan  heat  is  the  natural  heat  for  January.  Our^rish 
servant  has  very  much  piqued  me  this  morning,  by  sayins  her 
father  is  very  much  like  my  Shakspeare,  only  he  has  more  color 
than  the  engraving.  If  you  were  in  England,  I  dare  say  you 
would  be  able  to  pick  out  more  amusement  from  society  than  I 
am  able  to  do.  To  me  it  is  all  as  dull  here  as  Louisville  is  to  you. 
I  am  tired  of  theatres  ;  almost  all  parties  I  chance  to  fall  into,  I 
know  by  heart ;  I  know  the  different  styles  of  talk  in  different 
places  ;  what  subjects  will  be  started  ;  and  how  it  will  proceed  ; 
like  an  acted  play,  from  the  first  to  the  last  act.  I  know  three 
witty  people,  all  distinct  in  their  excellence — Rice,  Reynolds,  and 
Richard — Rice  is  the  wisest — Reynolds  the  playfulest — Richards 
the  out-of-the-wayest.  The  first  makes  you  laugh  and  think  ; 
the  second  makes  you  laugh  and  not  think ;  the  third  puzzles 
your  head ;  1  admire  the  first,  I  enjoy  the  second,  and  I  stare  at 
the  third  ;  the  first  is  claret,  the  second  ginger-beer,  the  third  is 
creme  de  Bijrapymdrag ;  the  first  is  inspired  by  Minerva,  the 
second  by  Mercury,  the  third  by  Harlequin  Epigram,  Esq. ;  the 
first  is  neat  in  his  dress,  the  second  careless,  the  third  uncom- 
fortable ;  the  first  speaks  adagio,  the  second  allegretto,  and  the 
third  botJi  together ;  the  first   is  Swiftean,  the  second   Tom  Crib- 


220  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ean,  the  third  is  Shandean.  I  know  three  people  of  no  wit  at  all, 
each  distinct  in  his  excellence,  A.,  B.  and  C.  A.  is  the  foolish- 
est,  B.  is  the  sulkiest,  and  C.  is  the  negative ;  A.  makes  you 
yawn,  B.  makes  you  hate,  and  as  for  C.  you  never  see  him  at  all, 
though  he  were  six  feet  high  ;  I  bear  the  first,  I  forbear  the  second, 
I  am  not  certain  that  the  third  is ;  the  first  is  gruel,  the  second 
ditch-water,  and  the  third  is  spilt  and  ought  to  be  wiped  up;  A. 
is  inspired  by  Jack  of  the  Clock,  B.  has  been  drilled  by  a  Russian 
Serjeant,  C.  they  say  is  not  his  mother's  true  child,  but  she  bought 
[him]  of  the  man  who  cries  "young  lambs  to  sell."  *  * 

I  will  send  you  a  close  written  sheet  on  the  first  of  next  month  ; 
but,  for  fear  of  missing  the  mail,  I  must  finish  here.  God  bless 
you,  my  dear  sister. 

Your  affectionate  brother, 

John  Keats. 

The  study  of  Italian,  to  which  Keats  had  been  latterly  much 
addicted,  had  included  Ariosto,  and  the  humorous  fairy  poem  on 
which  he  was  engaged  about  this  time  apears  to  me  to  have  origi- 
nated in  tiiat  occupation.  He  has  stated,  in  a  previous  passage, 
that  he  still  kept  enough  of  his  old  tastes  to  prefer  reading  Chau- 
cer to  Ariosto,  and  the  delightful  vagaries  of  the  master  of  Italian 
fancy  would  probably  not  have  had  so  much  effect  on  him  but  for 
Mr.  Brown's  intimate  acquaintance  with,  and  intense  enjoyment 
of,  those  frailer  charms  of  southern  song.  When,  in  after-times, 
Mr.  Brown  himself  retired  to  Italy,  he  hardly  ever  passed  a  day 
without  translating  some  portion  of  that  school  of  Italian  poetry, 
and  he  has  left  behind  him  a  complete  and  admirable  version 
of  the  first  five  cantos  of  Bojardo's  "  Orlando  Innamorato." 

Keats  had  a  notion  to  publish  this  fanciful  poem  under  a 
feigned  name,  and  that  of  "  Lucy  Vaughan  Lloyd  "  suggested 
itself  to  him  from  some  untraceable  association.  He  never  had 
even  made  up  his  mind  what  title  to  give  it;  the  "  Cap  and  Bells" 
and  "  Jealousies  "  were  two  he  spoke  of:  I  give  here  all  that  was 
written,  not  only  because  it  exhibits  his  versatility  of  talent,  but 
because  it  presents  him,  almost  for  the  first  time,  in  the  light  of  a 
humorous  writer,  just  at  the  moment  of  his  existence  when  real 
anxieties  were  pressing  most  threateningly  upon  him,  when  the 


JOHN  KEATS.  221 


struggle  between  his  ever-growing  passioniand  the  miserable  cir- 
cumstances of  iiis  daily  life  was  beating  clown  his  spirit,  and  when 
disease  was  advancing  with  stealthy,  but  not  altogether  unper- 
ceived,  advances,  to  consummate  by  a  cruel  and  lingering  death 
the  hard  conditions  of  his  mortal  being.  There  is  nothing  in  this 
combination  which  will  surprise  those  who  understand  the  poetic, 
or  even  the  literary,  nature,  but  I  know  few  stronger  instances  of 
a  moral  phenomenon  which  the  Hamlets  of  the  world  are  for 
ever  exhibiting  to  an  audience  that  can  only  resolve  the  problem 
by  doubting  the  reality  of  the  one  or  the  other  feeling,  of  the 
mirth  or  of  the  misery. 

I  am  unwilling  to  leave  this,  the  last  of  Keats's  literary  labors, 
without  a  w'ord  of  defence  against  the  objection  thai  might  with 
some  reason  be  raised  against  the  originality  of  his  genius,  from 
the  circumstance  that  it  is  easy  to  refer  almost  every  poem  he 
wrote  to  some  suggestion  of  style  and  manner  derived  from  pre- 
ceding writers.  From  the  Spenserian  "  Endymion,"  to  those 
Ariosto-like  stanzas,  you  can  always  see  reflected  in  the  mirror 
of  his  intellect  the  great  works  he  is  studying  at  the  time.  This 
is  so  generally  the  case  with  verse-writers,  and  the  test  has  been 
so  severely  and  successfully  applied  to  many  of  the  most  noted 
authors  of  our  time,  that  I  should  not  have  alluded  to  it  had  I  not 
been  desirous  to  claim  for  Keats  an  access  to  that  inmost  penetra- 
lium  of  Fame  which  is  solely  consecrated  to  original  genius.  The 
early  English  chronicle-dramas  supplied  Shakspeare  with  many 
materials  and  outlines  for  his  historical  plays,  and  the  "  Adamo" 
of  Andreini  has  indisputably  a  great  ellect  on  the  frame-work  of 
"  Paradise  Lost ;'"  but  every  one  feels  that  these  accidents  rather 
resemble  the  suggestions  of  nature  which  every  mind,  however 
independent,  receives  and  assimilates,  than  what  is  ordinarily 
meant  by  plagiarism  or  imitation.  In  the  case  of  Keats,  his  lite- 
rary studies  were  apparently  the  sources  of  his  productions,  and 
his  variety  and  facility  of  composition  certainly  increases  very 
much  in  proportion  to  his  reading,  thus  clearly  showing  how 
much  he  owed  to  those  who  had  preceded  him.  But  let  us  not 
omit  two  considerations  : — first,  that  these  resemblances  of  form 
or  spirit  are  a  reproduction,  not  an  imitation,  and  that  while  they 
often  are  what  those  great  masters  might  themselves   have   con- 


222  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

tentedly  written,  they  Always  include  something  which  the  model 
has  not — some  additional  intuitive  vigor  ;  and  secondly,  let  us 
never  forget,  that  wonderful  as  are  the  poems  of  Keats,  yet,  after 
all,  they  are  rather  the  records  of  a  poetical  education  than  the  ac- 
complished work  of  the  mature  artist.  This  is  in  truth  the  chief 
interest  of  these  pages  ;  this  is  what  these  letters  so  vividly  exhi- 
bit. Day  by  day,  his  imagination  is  extended,  his  fancy  enriched, 
his  taste  purified ;  every  fresh  acquaintance  with  the  motive 
minds  of  past  ge^nerations  leads  him  a  step  onwards  in  knowledge 
and  in  power  ;  the  elements  of  ancient  genius  become  his  own  ; 
the  skill  of  faculties  long  spent  revives  in  him  ;  ever,  like  Nature 
herself,  he  gladly  receives  and  energetically  reproduces.  And 
now  we  approach  the  consummation  of  his  laborious  work,  the 
formation  of  a  mind  of  the  highest  order  ;  we  hope  to  see  the  per- 
fect fruit  whose  promise  has  been  more  than  the  perfection  of 
noted  men  ;  we  desire  to  sympathize  with  this  realized  idea  of  a 
great  poet,  from  whicli  he  has  ever  felt  himself  so  far,  but  which 
he  yet  knows  he  is  ever  approaching  ;  we  yearn  to  witness  the 
full  flow  of  this  great  spiritual  river,  whose  source  has  long  lain 
in  the  heart  of  the  earth,  and  to  which  the  streams  of  a  thousand 
hills  have  ministered. 

One  night,  about  eleven  o'clock,  Keats  returned  home  in  a 
state  of  strange  physical  excitement — it  might  have  appeared  to 
those  who  did  not  know  him,  one  of  fierce  intoxication.  He  told 
his  friend  he  had  been  outside  tlie  stage-coach,  had  received  a 
severe  chill,  was  a  little  fevered,  but  added,  "  I  don't  feel  it  now." 
He  was  easily  persuaded  to  go  to  bed,  and  as  he  leapt  into  the 
cold  sheets,  before  his  head  was  on  the  pillow,  he  slightly  coughed 
and  said,  "  That  is  blood  from  my  mouth  ;  bring  me  the  candle  ; 
let  me  see  this  blood."  He  gazed  steadfastly  for  some  moments 
at  tiie  ruddy  stain,  and  then  looking  in  his  friend's  face  with  an 
expression  of  sudden  calnmess  never  to  be  forgotten,  said,  '  f  know 
the  color  of  that  blood — it  is  arterial  blood — I  cannot  be  deceived 
in  that  color  ;  that  drop  is  my  death-warrant.     I  must  die." 

A  surgeon  was  immediately  called  in,  and,  after  being  bled, 
Keats  fell  into  a  quiet  sleep.  The  medical  man  declared  his 
lungs  to  be  uninjured,  and  the  rupture  not  important,  but  he  him- 
self was  of  a  different  opinion,  and  with  the  frequent  self-prescience 


JOHN  KEATS.  223 


of  disease,  added  to  his  scientific  knowledge,  he  was  not  to  be  per- 
suaded oul;  of  his  forebodings.  At  limes,  however,  tlie  love  of 
life,  inherent  in  active  natures,  got  the  better  of  his  gloom.  "  If 
you  would  have  me  recover,"  he  said  to  his  devoted  friend  and 
constant  attendant,  Mr.  Brown,  "  flatter  me  with  a  hope  of  happi- 
ness when  I  shall  be  well,  for  I  am  now  so  weak  tliat  I  can  be 
flattered  into  hope."  "  Look  at  my  hand,"  he  said,  another  day, 
'*  it  is  that  of  a  man  of  fifty." 

The  advancing  year  brought  with  it  such  an  improvement  in 
his  health  and  strength,  as  in  the  estimation  of  many  almost 
amounted  to  recovery.  Gleams  of  his  old  cheerfulness  returned, 
as  the  following  letters  evince.  His  own  handwriting  was  always 
so  clear  and  good  as  to  be  almost  clerkly,  and  thus  he  can  afford 
to  joke  at  the  exhibitions  of  his  friends  in  that  unimportant  parti- 
cular. In  the  case  of  Mr.  Dilke,  the  long  and  useful  career  of 
that  able  and  independent  critic  has  been  most  intelligible  in  print 
to  a  generation  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  and  his  cordial  appre- 
ciation and  care  of  Keats  will  only  add  to  his  reputation  for  gene- 
rosity and  benevolence. 

Wentworth  Place,  Feb.  16,  1820. 
My  Dear  Rice, 

I  have  not  been  well  enough  to  make  any  tolerable  re- 
joinder to  your  kind  letter.  I  will,  as  you  advise,  be  very  chary 
of  my  health  and  spirits.  I  am  sorry  to  hear  of  your  relapse  and 
hypochondriac  symptoms  attending  it.  Let  us  hope  for  the  best, 
as  you  say.  I  shall  follow  your  example  in  looking  to  the  future 
good  rather  than  brooding  upon  the  present  ill.  I  have  not  been 
so  worn  with  lengthened  illnesses  as  you  have,  therefore  cannot 
answer  you  on  your  own  ground  with  respect  to  those  haunting 
and  deformed  thoughts  and  feelings  you  speak  of.  When  I  have 
been,  or  supposed  myself  in  health,  I  have  had  my  share  of  them, 
especially  within  the  last  year.  I  may  say,  that  for  six  months 
before  I  was  taken  ill  I  had  not  passed  a  tranquil  day.  Either 
that  gloom  overspread  me,  or  I  was  suffering  under  some  passion- 
ate feeling,  or  if  I  turned  to  versify,  that  acerbated  the  poison  of 
either  sensation.  The  beauties  of  nature  had  lost  their  power 
over  me.     How  astonishingly  (here  I  must  premise  that  illness, 


224  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

as  for  as  I  can  judge  in  so  short  a  time,  has  relieved  my  mind  of 
a  load  of  deceptive  tlioughts  and  images,  and  makes  me  perceive 
things  in  a  truer  light) — how  astonisliingly  does  the  ciiance  of 
leaving  the  world  impress  a  sense  of  its  natural  beauties  upon  us  ! 
Like  poor  FalstafF,  though  I  do  not  "  babble,"  I  think  of  green 
fields ;  I  muse  with  the  greatest  affection  on  every  flower  I  have 
known  from  my  infancy — their  shapes  and  colors  are  as  new  to 
me  as  if  I  had  just  created  them  with  a  superhuman  fancy.  It  is 
because  they  are  connected  with  the  most  thoughtless  and  the  hap- 
piest moments  of  our  lives.  I  have  seen  foreign  flowers  in  hot- 
houses, of  the  most  beautiful  nature,  but  I  do  not  care  a  straw 
for  them.  The  simple  flowers  of  our  Spring  are  what  I  want  to 
see  again. 

Brown  has  left  the  inventive  and  taken  to  the  imitative  art. 
He  is  doing  his  forte,  which  is  copying  Hogarth's  heads.  He 
has  just  made  a  purchase  of  the  Methodist  Meeting  picture,  which 
gave  me  a  horrid  dream  a  few  nights  ago.  I  hope  I  shall  sit 
under  the  trees  with  you  again  in  some  such  place  as  the  Isle  of 
Wight.  I  do  not  mind  a  game  of  cards  in  a  saw-pit  or  wagon, 
but  if  ever  you  catch  me  on  a  stage-coach  in  the  winter  full 
against  the  wind,  bring  me  down  with  a  brace  of  bullets,  and  I 
promise  not  to  'peach.  Remember  me  to  Reynolds  and  say  how 
much  I  should  like  to  hear  from  him  ;  that  BroWn  returned  im- 
mediately after  he  went  on  Sunday,  and  that  I  was  vexed  at  for- 
getting to  ask  him  to  lunch  ;  for  as  he  went  towards  the  gate,  I 
saw  he  was  fatigued  and  hungry. 

I  am,  my  dear  Rice, 

Ever  most  sincerely  yours, 

John  Keats. 

I  have  broken  tins  open  to  let  you  know  I  was  surprised 
at  seeing  it  on  the  table  this  morning,  thinking  it  had  gone  long 
ago. 

[Postmark,  Hampstead,  March  4, 1820.] 
My  Dear  Dilke, 

Since  I  saw  you  I  have  been  gradually,  too  gradually 
perhaps,  improving  ;  and,  tliough  under  an  interdict  with  respect 


JOHN  KEATS.  225 


to  animal  food,  living  upon  pseudo-victuals,  Brown  saj''s  I  have 
picked  up  a  little  flesii  lately.  If  I  can  keep  off  inflammation  for 
the  next  six  weeks,  1  trust  I  shall  do  very  well.  Reynolds  is 
going  to  sail  on  tlic  salt  seas.  Brown  has  been  mightily  progress- 
ing with  his  Hogarth.  A  damn'd  melancholy  picture  it  is,  and 
during  the  first  week  of  my  illness  it  gave  me  a  psalm-singing 
nightmare  that  made  me  almost  faint  away  in  my  sleep.  I 
know  I  am  better,  for  I  can  bear  the  picture.  I  have  experienced 
a  specimen  of  great  politeness  from  Mr.  Barry  Cornwall.  He 
has  sent  me  his  books.  Some  time  ago  he  had  given  his  published 
book  to  Hunt,  for  me  ;  Hunt  forgot  to  give  it,  and  Barry  Corn- 
wall, thinking  I  had  received  it,  must  have  thought  me  a  very 
neglectful  fellow.  Notwithstanding,  he  sent  me  his  second  book, 
and  on  my  explaining  that  I  had  not  received  his  first,  he  sent  me 
that  also.  I  shall  not  expect  Mrs.  Dilke  at  Hampstead  next  week 
unless  the  weather  changes  for  the  warmer.  It  is  better  to  run 
no  chance  of  a  supernumerary  cold  in  March.  As  for  you,  you 
must  come.  You  must  improve  in  your  penmanship ;  your 
writing  is  like  the  speaking  of  a  child  of  three  years  old — very 
understandable  to  its  father,  but  to  no  one  else.  The  worst  is,  it 
looks  well — no,  that  is  not  the  worst — the  worst  is,  it  is  worse 
than  Bailey's.  Bailey's  looks  illegible  and  may  perchance 
be  read  ;  yours  looks  very  legible,  and  may  perchance  not 
be  read.  I  would  endeavor  to  give  you  a  fac-simile  of  your 
word  "  Thistlewood  "  if  I  were  not  minded  on  the  instant  that 
Lord  Chesterfield  has  done  some  such  thing  to  his  son.  Now 
I  would  not  bathe  in  the  same  river  with  Lord  C,  though  I  had 
the  upper  hand  of  the  stream.  I  am  grieved  that  in  writing  and 
speaking  it  is  necessary  to  make  use  of  the  same  particles  as  he 
did.  Cobbett  is  expected  to  come  in.  O  !  that  I  had  two  double 
plumpers  for  him.  The  ministry  is  not  so  inimical  to  him,  but  it 
would  like  to  put  him  into  Coventry.  Casting  my  eye  on  the 
other  side  I  see  a  long  word  written  in  a  most  vile  manner,  unbe- 
coming a  critic.  You  must  recollect  I  have  served  no  appren- 
ticeship to  old  plays.  If  the  only  copies  of  the  Greek  and  Latin 
authors  had  been  made  by  you,  Bailey,  and  Haydon,  they  were 
as  good  as  lost.  It  has  been  said  that  the  character  of  a  man 
may  be  known  by  his  handwriting;  if  the  character  of  the  age 


226  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

may  be  known  by  the  average  goodness  of  ours,  what  a  slovenly 
age  we  live  in.  Look  at  Queen  Elizabeth's  Latin  exercises  and 
blush.  Look  at  Milton's  hand  :  I  can't  say  a  word  for  Shak- 
speare. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  spring  Keats's  outward  health  was  so 
nriuch  better  that  the  physician  recommended  him  to  take  another 
tour  in  Scotland.  Mr.  Brown,  however,  thinking  him  quite  unfit 
to  cope  with  the  chance  hardships  of  such  an  expedition,  gener- 
ously dissuaded  him,  though  he  was  so  far  from  anticipating  any 
rapid  change  in  Keats's  constitution  that  he  determined  to  go 
alone  and  return  to  his  friend  in  a  few  weeks.  On  the  seventh  of 
May  the  two  friends  parted  at  Gravesend,  and  never  met  again. 

Keats  went  to  lodge  at  Kentish  Town  to  be  near  his  friend 
Leigh  Hunt,  but  soon  returned  to  Hampstead,  where  he  remained 
with  the  family  of  the  lady  to  whom  he  was  attached.  In  these 
latter  letters  the  catastrophe  of  mortal  sickness,  accompanied  by 
the  dread  of  poverty,  is  seen  gradually  coming  on,  and  the  pub- 
lication of  his  new  volume  hardly  relieves  the  general  gloom  of 
the  picture. 

My  Dear  Dilke, 

As  Brown  is  not  to  be  a  fixture  at  Hampstead,  I 
have  at  last  made  up  my  mind  to  send  home  all  lent  books.  I 
should  have  seen  you  before  this,  but  my  mind  has  been  at  work 
all  over  the  world  to  find  out  what  to  do.  I  have  my  choice  of 
three  things,  or,  at  least,  two, — South  America,  or  surgeon  to  an 
Indiaman  ;  which  last,  I  think,  will  be  my  fate.  I  shall  resolve 
in  a  Tew  days.  Remember  me  to  Mrs.  D.  and  Charles,  and  your 
father  and  mother. 

Ever  truly  yours, 

John  Keats. 

June  IL 
My  Dear  Taylor, 

In  reading  over  the  proof  of  "  St.  Agnes'  Eve" 
since  I  left  Fleet-street,  I  was  struck  with  what  appears  to  me  an 


JOHN  KEATS.  227 


alteration  in  the  seventh  stanza  very  much  for  the  worse.  The 
passage  I  mean  stands  thus : — 

"  her  maiden  eyes  incline 
Still  on  the  floor,  while  many  a  sweeping  train 
Pass  by." 

'Twas  originally  written — 

"  her  maiden  eyes  divine 
Fix'd  on  the  floor,  saw  many  a  sweeping  train 
Pa?s  by." 

My  meaning  is  quite  destroyed  in  the  alteration.  I  do  not  use 
train  for  concourse  of  imsscrs  hy,  but  for  skirts  sweeping  along  the 
floor. 

In  the  first  stanza  my  copy  reads,  second  line — 

"  bitter  cMll  it  was," 

to  avoid  the  echo  cold  in  the  second  line. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

John  Keats. 

Mv  Dear  Brown, 

I  have  only  been  to 's  once  since  you  left, 

when could  not  find  your  letters.     Now  this  is   bad  of  me. 

I  should,  in  this  instance,  conquer  the  great  aversion  to  breaking 
up  my  regular  habits,  which  grows  upon  me  more  and  more. 
True,  I  have  an  excuse  in  the  weather,  which  drives  one  from 
shelter  to  shelter  in  any  little  excursion.  I  have  not  heard  from 
George.  My  book*  is  coming  out  with  very  low  hopes,  though 
not  spirits,  on  my  part.  This  shall  be  my  last  trial ;  not  succeed- 
ing, I  shall  try  what  I  can  do  in  the  apothecary  line.  When  you 
hear  from  or  see it  is  probable  you  will  hear  some  com- 
plaints against  me,  which  this  notice  is  not  intended  to  forestall. 
The  fact  is,  I  did  behave  badly ;  but  it  is  to  be  attributed  to  my 
health,  spirits,  and  the  disadvantageous  ground  I  stand  on  in  soci- 
ety. I  could  go  and  accommodate  matters  if  I  were  not  too  weary 
of  the  world.  I  know  that  they  are  more  happy  and  comfortable 
than  I  am  ;  therefore  why  should  I  trouble  myself  about  it  ?     I 

*  "  Lamia,  Isabella,  and  other  Poems." 


228  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

foresee  I  shall  know  very  few  people  in  the  course  of  a  year  or 
two.  Men  get  such  different  habits  that  they  become  as  oil  and 
vinegar  to  one  another.  Thus  far  I  have  a  consciousness  of  hav- 
ing been  pretty  dull  and  heavy,  both  in  subject  and  phrase ;  I 
might  add,  enigmatical.  I  am  in  the  wrong,  and  the  world  is  in 
the  right,  I  have  no  doubt.  Fact  is,  I  have  had  so  many  kind- 
nesses done  me  by  so  many  people,  that  I  am  cheveaux-de-frised 
with   benefits,  which  I  must  jump  over  or  break    down.     I  met 

in  town,  a  few  days  ago,  who  invited  me  to  supper  to  meet 

Wordsworth,  Southey,  Lamb,  Haydon,  and  some  more  ;  I  was 
too  careful  of  my  health  to  risk  being  out  at  night.  Talking  of 
that,  I  continue  to  improve  slowly,  but,  1  think,  surely.  There 
is  a  famous  exhibition  in  Pall  Mall  of  old  English  portraits  by 
Vandyck  and  Holbein,  Sir  Peter  Lely,  and  the  great  Sir  Godfrey. 
Pleasant  countenances  predominate  ;  so  I  will  mention  two  or 
three  unpleasant  ones.  There  is  James  the  First,  whose  appear- 
ance would  disgrace  a  "  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Women  ;" 
so  very  squalid  and  subdued  to  nothing  he  looks.  Then,  there  is 
old  Lord  Burleigh,  the  high-priest  of  economy,  the  political  save- 
all,  who  has  the  appearance  of  a  Pharisee  just  rebuffed  by  a  Gos- 
pel hon-mot.  Then,  there  is  George  the  Second,  very  like  an  un- 
intellectual  Voltaire,  troubled  with  the  gout  and  a  bad  temper. 
Then,  there  is  young  Devereux,  the  favorite,  with  every  appear- 
ance of  as  slang  a  boxer  as  any  in  the  Court ;  his  face  is  cast  in 
the  mould  of  blackguardism  with  jockey-plaster.  I  shall  soon 
begin  upon  "  Lucy  Vaughan  Lloyd."  1  do  not  begin  composition 
yet,  being  willing,  in  case  of  a  relapse,  to  have  nothing  to  re- 
proach myself  with.  I  hope  the  weather  will  give  you  the  slip  ; 
let  it  show  itself  and  steal  out  of  your  company.  When  I  have 
sent  off  this,  I  shall  write  another  to  some  place  about  fifty  miles 
in  advance  of  you. 

Good  morning  to  you. 

Yours  ever  sincerely, 

John  Keats. 

My  Dear  Brown, 

You  may  not  have  heard  from ,  or ,  or  in  any 

way,  that  an  attack  of  spitting  of  blood,  and  all  its  weakening 


JOHN  KEATS.  229 


consequences,  has  prevented  nic  from  writing  for  so  long  a  time. 
I  have  matter  now  for  a  very  long  letter,  but  not  news ;  so  I  must 
cut  every  thing  short.  1  shall  make  some  confession,  which  you 
will  be  the  only  person,  for  many  reasons,  I  shall  trust  with.  A 
winter  in  England  would,  I  have  not  a  doubt,  kill  me;  so  1  have 
resolved  to  go  to  Italy,  either  by  sea  or  land.  Not  that  1  have  any 
great  hopes  of  that,  for,  1  think,  there  is  a  core  of  disease  in  me 
not  easy  to  pull  out.  I  shall  be  obliged  to  set  off  in  less  than  a 
month.  Do  not,  my  dear  Brown,  tease  yourself  about  me.  You 
must  fill  up  your  time  as  well  as  you  can,  and  as  happily.  You 
must  think  of  my  faults  as  lightly  as  you  can.  When  I  have 
health  I  will  bring  up  the  long  arrears  of  letters  I  owe  you.  My 
book  has  had  good  success  among  the  literary  people,  and  I  be- 
lieve has  a  moderate  sale.     I  have  seen  very  few  people  we  know. 

has  visited  me  more  than  any  one.     I  would  go  to and 

make  some  inquiries  after  you,  if  1  could  with  any  bearable  sensa- 
tion ;  but  a  person  I  am  not  quite  used  to  causes  an  oppression  on 
my  chest.  Last  week  I  received  a  letter  from  Shelley,  at  Pisa, 
of  a  very  kind  nature,  asking  me  to  pass  the  winter  with  him. 
Hunt  has  behaved  very  kindly  to  me.  You  shall  hear  from  me 
again  shortly. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


Hampstead,  3Irs. 's,  Wenticorth  Place. 

My  Dear  Haydon, 

I  am  much  better  this  morning  than  I  was  when  I  wrote 
you  the  note ;  that  is,  my  hopes  and  spirits  arc  better,  which  are 
generally  at  a  very  low  ebb,  from  such  a  protracted  illness.  I 
shall  be  here  for  a  little  time,  and  at  home  all  every  day.  A 
journey  Jo  Italy  is  recommended  me,  wliich  I  have  resolved  upon, 
and  am  beginning  to  prepare  for.  Hoping  to  see  you  shortly, 
I  remain  your  affectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 


Mr.  Haydon  has  recorded  in  his  journal  the  terrible  impres- 
sion of  this  vibit  :  the  very  coloring  of  the  scene  struck  forcibly  on 

11 


230  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  painter's  imagination  ;  tlie  white  curtains,  the  wliite  sheets, 
the  white  shirt,  and  the  white  skin  of  his  friend,  all  contrasted 
with  the  bright  hectic  fiush  on  liis  cheek  and  heightened  the  sinis- 
ter effect :  he  went  away  hardly  hoping. 

Wentworth  Place,  [14^7*  August,  1820.] 
My  Dear  Taylor, 

My  chest  is  in  such  a  nervous  state,  that  any  thing 
extra,  such  as  speaking  to  an  unaccustomed  person,  or  writing  a 
note,  half  suffocates  me.  This  journey  to  Italy  wakes  me  at  day- 
light every  morning,  and  haunts  me  horribly.  I  shall  endeavor 
to  go,  though  it  oe  with  the  sensation  of  marching  up  against  a 
battery.  Tne  first  step  towards  it  is  to  know  the  expense  of  a 
journey  and  a  year's  residence,  which  if  you  will  ascertain  for 
me,  and  let  me  know  early,  you  will  greatly  serve  me.  1  have 
more  to  say,  but  must  desist,  for  every  line  I  write  increases  the 
tightness  of  my  chest,  and  I  have  many  more  to  do.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  this  sort  of  thing  does  not  continue  for  nothing.  If 
you  can  come,  with  any  of  our  friends,  do. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

John  Keats. 

My  Dear  Brown, 

I  ought  to  be  ofl'  at  the  end  of  this  week,  as  the  cold 
winds  begin  to  blow  towards  evening  ; — but  I  will  wait  till  I  have 
your  answer  to  this.  I  am  to  be  introduced,  before  I  set  out,  to  a 
Dr.  Clark,  a  physician  settled  at  Rome,  who  promises  to  befriend 
me  in  every  way  there.  The  sale  of  my  book  is  very  slow, 
though  it  has  been  very  highly  rated.  One  of  the  causes,  I  un- 
derstand from  different  quarters,  of  the  unpopularity  of  this  new 
book,  is  the  offence  the  ladies  take  at  me.  On  thinking  that  mat- 
ter over,  I  am  certain  that  I  have  said  nothing  in  a  spirit  to  dis- 
please any  woman  I  would  care  to  please  ;  but  still  there  is  a  ten- 
dency to  class  women  in  my  books  with  roses  and  sweetmeats, — 
they  never  see  themselves  dominant.  I  will  say  no  more,  but, 
Avaiting  in   anxiety  for  your  answer,  doff  my  hat,  and  make  a 

purse  as  long  as  I  can. 

Your  affectionate  friend, 
John  Keats, 


JOHN  KEATS.  231 


The  acquaintance  between  Keats  and  Mr.  Severn,  the  artist, 
had  begun  about  the  end  of  1817,  and  a  similarity  of  general 
tastes  soon  led  to  a  most  agreeable  interchange  of  their  reciprocal 
abilities.  To  Severn  the  poetical  faculty  of  Keats  was  an  ever- 
flowing  source  of  enjoyment  and  inspiration — to  Keats  the  double 
talent  of  Severn  for  painting  and  music  imparted  the  principles 
and  mechanical  processes  of  Art.  Keats  himself  had  a  taste  for 
jiaiiiting  that  might  have  been  cultivated  into  skill,  and  he  could 
produce  a  pleasing  musical  etTcct,  though  possessing  hardly  any 
voice.  He  would  sit  for  hours  while  Severn  was  playing,  follow- 
ing the  air  v.iih  a  low  kind  of  recitative.  "  I  delight  in  Haydn's 
symphonies,"  he  one  day  said,  "  he  is  like  a  child  ;  there's  no 
knowing  what  he  will  do  next."     "  Shakspeare's  Songs,  such  as 

"  Full  fathom  five  thy  father  lies," 

and 

"  The  rain  it  raineth  every  day," 

set  to  music  by  Purcell,  were  great  favorites  with  him. 

Mr.  Severn  had  had  the  gratification,  from  the  commencement 
of  their  acquaintance,  of  bringing  Keats  into  communion  with  the 
great  masters  of  painting.  A  notable  instance  of  the  impression 
made  on  that  susceptible  nature  by  those  achievements  is  manifest 
as  early  as  the  Hymn  in  the  fourth  book  of  the  "  Endymion," 
which  is,  in  fact,  the  "  Bacchus  and  Ariadne  "  of  Titian,  now  in 
our  National  Gallery,  translated  into  verse.  Take  these  images 
as  examples : 

"  And  as  I  sat,  over  the  light  blue  liills 
There  came  a  noise  of  revelers  ;  the  rills 
Into  the  wide  stream  came  of  purple  hue — 

'Twas  Bacchus  and  his  crew  ! 
The  earnest  trumpet  spake,  and  silver  thrills 
From  kissing  cymbals  made  a  merry  din — 

'Twas  Bacchus  and  his  kin  ! 
Like  to  a  moving  vintage  down  they  came. 
Crowned  with  green  leaves,  and  faces  all  on  flame. 
«  »  »  » 

"  Within  his  car,  aloft,  young  Bacchus  stood. 
Trifling  his  ivy-dart,  in  dancing  mood. 
With  sidelong  laughing ; 


232  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

And  near  him  rode  Silenus  on  his  ass, 
Pelted  with  flowers  as  he  on  did  pass, 

Tipsily  quaffing. 
*  *  *  * 

Mounted  on  panthers'  furs  and  lions'  manes, 
From  rear  to  van  they  scour  about  the  plains  ; 
A  three-days'  journey  in  a  moment  done  ; 
And  always,  at  the  rising  of  the  sun. 
About  the  wilds  they  hunt  with  spear  and  horn, 
On  spleenful  unicorn." 


At  the  period  occupied  by  this  narrative,  the  gold  medal  to  be 
adjudged  by  the  Royal  Academy  for  the  best  historical  painting 
had  not  been  given  for  the  last  twelve  years,  no  work  having  been 
produced  which  the  judges  regarded  as  deserving  so  high  an  ac- 
knowledgment of  merit.  When  therefore  it  was  given  to  Mr. 
Severn  for  his  painting  of  Spenser's  "  Cave  of  Despair  "  there 
burst  out  a  chorus  of  long-hoarded  discontents,  which  fell  severely 
on  the  successful  candidate.  Severn  had  long  worked  at  the  pic- 
ture in  secret — Keats  watching  its  progress  with  the  greatest  in- 
terest. I  have  already  mentioned  one  instance  in  which  the  poet 
passionately  defended  his  friend  when  attacked,  and  now  the  time 
was  come  when  that  and  similar  proofs  of  attachment  were  to 
receive  abundant  compensation.  Entirely  regardless  of  his  future 
prospects,  and  ready  to  abandon  all  the  advantages  of  the  position 
he  had  won,  Mr.  Severn  at  once  offered  to  accompany  Keats  to 
Italy.  For  the  change  of  climate  now  remained  the  only  chance 
of  prolonging  a  life  so  dear  both  to  genius  and  to  friendship,  and 
a  long  and  lonely  voyage,  and  solitary  transportation  to  a  foreign 
land,  must,  with  such  a  sympathetic  and  affectionate  nature,  neu- 
tralize all  outward  advantages,  to  say  nothing  of  the  miserable 
condition  in  which  he  would  be  reduced  in  case  the  disease  did 
not  give  way  to  the  alteration  of  scene  and  temperature.  Such  a 
companionship,  therefore,  as  this  which  was  proposed,  was  every 
thing  to  him,  and  though  he  reproached  himself  on  his  death-bed 
with  permitting  Severn  to  make  the  sacrifice,  it  no  doubt  afforded 
all  the  alleviation  of  which  his  sad  condition  was  capable. 

During  a  pedestrian  tour,  occasional  delays  in  the  delivery  of 
letters  are  inevitable.     Thus  Mr.  Brown  walked  on  disappointed 


JOHN  KEATS.  233 


from  one  post-office  to  another,  till,  on  the  ninth  of  September,  he 
received  at  Dunkeld  the  above  alarming  intelligence.  He  lost  no 
time  in  embarking  at  Dundee,  and  arrived  in  London  only  one 
day  too  late.  Unknown  to  each,  the  vessels  containing  these  two 
anxious  friends  lay  a  whole  night  side  by  side  at  Gravesend,  and 
by  an  additional  irony  of  fate,  when  Keats's  ship  was  di'iven  back 
into  Portsmouth  by  stress  of  weather,  Mr.  Brown  was  staying  in 
the  neighborhood  within  ten  miles,  when  Keats  landed  and  spent 
a  day  on  shore.  Nothing  was  left  to  him  but  to  make  his  prepa- 
rations for  following  Keats  as  speedily  as  possible,  and  remaining 
with  him  in  Italy,  if  it  turned  out  that  a  southern  climate  was 
necessary  for  the  preservation  of  his  life. 

The  voyage  began  under  tolerably  prosperous  auspices. 
"Keats,"  wrote  Mr.  Severn  on  the  20th  of  September,  "looks 
very  happy;  for  myself,  I  would  not  change  with  any  one." 
One  of  his  companions  in  the  vessel  was  a  young  lady  afflicted 
with  the  same  malady  as  himself,  and  whose  illness  often  diverted 
his  thoughts  from  his  own.  Yet  there  are  in  the  following  letter 
deep  tones  of  moral  and  physical  suffering,  which  perhaps  only 
found  utterance  in  communion  with  the  friend  from  whom  he  was 
almost  conscious  he  was  parting  for  ever.  He  landed  once  more 
in  England,  on  the  Dorchester  coast,  after  a  weary  fortnight  spent 
in  beating  about  the  Channel :  the  bright  beauty  of  the  day  and 
the  scene  revived  for  a  moment  the  poet's  drooping  heart,  and  the 
inspiration  remained  on  him  for  some  time  even  after  his  return 
to  the  ship.  It  was  then  that  he  composed  that  Sonnet  of  solemn 
tenderness — 

"Bright  star!  would  I  were  stedfast  as  thou  art,"  &c.* 

and  wrote  it  out  in  a  copy  of  Shakspeare's  Poems  he  had  given 
to  Severn  a  few  days  before.  I  know  of  nothing  written  after- 
wards. 

Maria  Crowther, 
Off  Yarmouth,  Isle  of  Wight,  Sept.  28,  1820. 
Mv  Dear  Browx, 

The  time   has  not  yet  come  for  a  pleasant  letter  from 
me.     I  have  delayed  writing  to  you  from  time  to  time,  because  I 


Sec  the  "  Literary  Remains." 


234  lifl:  and  letters  of 

felt  how  impossible  it  was  to  enliven  you  with  one  heartening 
hope  of  my  recovery.  Tliis  morning  in  bed  the  matter  struck  me 
in  a  different  manner ;  I  thought  I  would  write  "  while  I  was  in 
some  liking,"  or  I  might  become  too  ill  to  write  at  all  ;  and  then, 
if  the  desire  to  have  written  should  become  strong,  it  would  be  a 
great  affliction  to  me.  I  have  many  more  letters  to  write,  and  I 
bless  my  stars  that  I  have  begun,  for  time  seems  to  press.  This 
may  be  my  best  opportunity.  We  are  in  a  calm,  and  1  am  easy 
enough  this  morning.  If  my  spirits  seem  too  low  you  may  in 
some  degree  impute  it  to  our  having  been  at  sea  a  fortnight  with- 
out making  any  way.  1  was  very  disappointed  at  Bcdhampton, 
and  was  much  provoked  at  the  thought  of  your  being  at  Chiches- 
ter to-day.  I  should  have  delighted  in  setting  off  for  London  for 
the  sensation  merely,  for  what  should  I  do  there  ?  I  could  not 
leave  my  lungs  or  stomach,  or  other  worse  things  behind  me.  I 
wish  to  write  on  subjects  that  will  not  agitate  me  much.  There 
is  one  1  must  mention  and  have  done  with  it.  Even  if  my  body 
would  recover  of  itself,  this  would  prevent  it.  The  very  thing 
which  I  want  to  live  most  for  will  be  a  great  occasion  of  my 
deatli.  I  cannot  help  it.  Who  can  help  it  ?  Were  I  in  health 
it  would  make  me  ill,  and  how  can  I  bear  it  in  my  state  ?  I  dare 
say  you  will  be  able  to  guess  on  what  subject  I  am  harping — you 
know  what  was  my  greatest  pain  during  the  first  part  of  my  illness 
at  your  house.  I  wish  for  death  every  day  and  night  to  deliver 
me  from  these  pains,  and  then  I  wish  death  away,  for  death  would 
destroy  even  those  pains,  which  are  better  than  notiiing.  Land 
and  sea,  weakness  and  decline,  are  great  separators,  but  Death  is 
the  great  divorcer  for  ever.  When  the  pang  of  this  thought 
has  passed  through  my  mind,  I  may  say  the  bitterness  of  death  is 
passed.  T  often  wish  for  you,  that  you  might  flatter  me  with  the 
best.     I  think,  without  my  mentioning  it,  for  my  sake,  you  would 

be  a  friend   to   Miss when   I  am  dead.     You  tliink   she  has 

many  faults,  but  for  my  sake  think  she  has  not  one.  If  there  is 
any  thing  you  can  do  for  her  by  word  or  deed  I  know  you  will  do 
it.  I  am  in  a  state  at  present  in  which  woman,  merely  as  woman, 
can  luive  no  more  power  over  me  than  stocks  and  stones,  and  yet 

the  difference  of  my  sensations  with  respect  to  i\Iiss and  my 

sister  is  amazino- — the  one  seems  to  absorb  tb.e  other  to  a  degree 


JOHN  KEATS.  235 


incredible.     I  seldom  think  of  my  brother  and  sister  in  America  ; 

the  thought  of  leaving  Miss is  beyond  every  thing  horrible 

— the  sense  of  darkness  coming  over  me — I  eternally  see  her 
figure  eternally  vanishing ;  some  of  the  phrases  she  was  in  the 
luibit  of  using  during  my  last  nursing  at  Wentworlh  Place  ring 
in  my  ears.  Is  there  another  life  ?  Shall  I  awake  and  find  all 
this  a  dream  ?  There  must  be,  we  cannot  be  created  for  this  sort 
of  suffering.  The  receiving  this  letter  is  to  be  one  of  yours — I 
will  say  nothing  about  our  friendship,  or  rather  yours  to  me,  more 
than  that,  as  you  deserve  to  escape,  you  will  never  be  so  unhappy 
as  I  am.     I  should  think  of  you  in   my  last  moments.     I  shall 

endeavor  to  write  to   Miss ,  if  possible,  to-day.     A  sudden 

stop  to  my  life  in  the  middle  of  one  of  these  letters  would  be  no 
bad  thing,  for  it  keeps  one  in  a  sort  of  fever  awhile ;  though 
fatigued  with  a  letter  longer  than  any  I  have  written  for  a  long 
while,  it  would  be  better  to  go  on  for  ever  than  awake  to  a  sense 
of  contrary  winds.  We  expect  to  put  into  Portland  Roads 
to-night.  The  captain,  the  crew,  and  the  passengers,  are  all  ill- 
tempered  and  weary.  I  shall  write  to  Dilke.  I  feel  as  if  1  was 
closing  my  last  letter  to  you,  my  dear  Brown. 

Your  aflectionate  friend, 

John  Keats. 

A  violent  storm  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay  lasted  for  thirty  hours, 
and  exposed  the  voyagers  to  considerable  danger.  "  \Vhat  awful 
music!"  cried  Severn,  as  the  waves  raged  against  the  vessel. 
"Yes,"  said  Keats,  as  a  sudden  lurch  inundated  the  cabin,  "  Wa- 
ter parted  from  the  sea."  After  the  tempest  had  subsided,  Keats 
was  reading  the  description  of  the  storm  in  "  Don  Juan,"  and  cast 
the  book  on  the  floor  in  a  transport  of  indignation.  "  How 
horrible  an  example  of  human  nature,"  he  cried,  "  is  this  man, 
who  has  no  pleasure  left  him  but  to  gloat  over  and  jeer  at  the 
most  awful  incidents  of  life.  Oh !  this  is  a  paltry  originality, 
which  consists  in  making  solemn  things  gay,  and  gay  things  so- 
lemn, and  yet  it  will  fascinate  thousands,  by  the  very  diabolical 
outrage  of  their  sympathies.  Byron's  perverted  education  makes 
him  assume  to  feel,  and  try  to  impart  to  others,  those  depraved 
sensations  which  the  want  of  any  education  excites  in  many." 


236  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  invalid's  sufferings  increased  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
voyage  and  a  ten-days'  miserable  quarantine  at  Naples.  But, 
when  once  fairly  landed  in  comfortable  quarters,  his  spirits  ap- 
peared somewhat  to  revive,  and  the  glorious  scenery  to  bring  back, 
at  moments,  his  old  sense  of  delight.  But  tliese  transitory  gleams, 
which  the  hopeful  heart  of  Severn  caught  and  stored  up,  were  in 
truth  only  remarkable  as  contrasted  with  the  chronic  gloom  that 
overcame  all  things,  even  his  love.  What  other  words  can  tell 
the  story  like  his  own  ?  What  fiction  could  color  more  deeply 
this  picture  of  all  that  is  most  precious  in  existence  becoming 
most  painful  and  destructive  ?  What  profounder  pathos  can  the 
world  of  tragedy  exhibit  than  this  expression  of  all  that  is  good 
and  great  in  nature  writhing  impotent  in  the  grasp  of  an  implaca- 
ble destiny  ? 

Naples,  Nov.  1,  [1820.] 
My  Dear  Brov/n, 

Yesterday  we  were  let  out  of  quarantine,  during 
which  my  health  suffered  more  from  bad  air  and  the  stifled  cabin 
than  it  had  done  the  wiiole  voyage.  The  fresh  air  revived  me  a 
little,  and  I  hope  I  am  well  enough  this  morning  to  write  to  you  a 
short  calm  letter  ; — if  that  can  be  called  one,  in  which  I  am  afraid 
to  speak  of  what  I  would  fainest  dwell  upon.  As  I  liave  gone 
thus  far  into  it,  I  must  go  on  a  little  ; — perhaps  it  may  relieve  the 
load  of  wretchedness  which  presses  upon  me.  The  persuasion 
tliat  I  shall  see  her  no  more  will  kill  me.  My  dear  Brown,  I 
should  have  had  her  when  I  was  in  health,  and  I  should  have  re- 
mained well.  I  can  bear  to  die — 1  cannot  bear  to  leave  her.  Oh, 
God  !  God  !  God  !  Every  thing  1  have  in  my  trunks  that  reminds 
me  of  her  goes  through  me  like  a  spear.  The  silk  lining  she  put 
in  my  traveling  cap  scalds  my  head.  My  imagination  is  horribly 
vivid  about  her — I  see  her — I  hear  her.  There  is  nothing  in  the 
world  of  sufficient  interest  to  divert  me  from  her  a  moment.  Tl)is 
was  the  case  when  I  was  in  England  ;  I  cannot  recollect,  without 
shuddering,  the  time  that  I  was  a  prisoner  at  Hunt's,  and  used  to 
keep  my  eyes  fixed  on  Hampstead  all  day.  Then  there  was  a 
good  hope  of  seeing  her  again — Now  ! — O  that  I  could  be  buried 
near  where  she  lives !     I  am  afraid   to  write  to  her — to  receive  a 


JOHN  KEATS/  237 


letter  from  her — to  see  her  handwriting  would  break  my  heart — 
even  to  hear  of  her  anyhow,  to  see  lier  name  written,  would  be 
more  than  I  can  bear.  My  dear  Brown,  what  am  I  to  do  ?  Where 
can  I  look  for  consolation  or  ease  ?  If  I  had  any  chance  of  re- 
covery, this  passion  would  kill  me.  Indeed,  through  the  whole  of 
my  illness,  both  at  your  house  and  at  Kentish  Town,  this  fever 
has  never  ceased  wearing  me  out.  When  you  write  to  me,  which 
you  will  do  immediately,  write  to  Rome  (poste  restanle) — if  she  is 

well  and  happy,  put  a  mark  thus  + ;  if 

Remember  me  to  all.  I  will  endeavor  to  bear  my  miseries 
patiently.  A  person  in  my  state  of  health  should  not  have  such 
miseries  to  bear.  Write  a  short  note  to  my  sister,  saying  you 
have  heard  from  me.  Severn  is  very  well.  If  I  were  in  better 
health  I  would  urge  your  coming  to  Rome.  I  fear  there  is  no  one 
can  give  me  any  comfort.  Is  there  any  news  of  George  ?  O, 
that  something  fortunate  had  evv.r  happened  to  me  or  my  brothers  ! 
— then  I  might  hope, — but  despair  is  forced  upon  me  as  a  habit. 
My  dear  Brown,  for  my  sake,  be  her  advocate  for  ever.  I  cannot 
say  a  word  about  Naples;  I  do  not  feel  at  all  concerned  in  the 
thousand  novelties  around  me.  I  am  afraid  to  wi-ite  to  her.  I 
should  like  her  to  know  that  I  do  not  forget  her.  Oh,  Brown,  I 
have  coals  of  fire  in  my  breast.  It  surprises  me  that  the  human 
heart  is  capable  of  containing  and  bearing  so  much  misery.  Was 
I  born  for  this  end  ?  God  bless  her,  and  her  mother,  and  my  sis- 
ter, and  George,  and  his  wife,  and  you,  and  all  ! 

Your  ever  alTectionate  friend, 

Jonx  Keats. 

Thursday. — I  was  a  day  too  early  for  the  Courier.  He  sets 
out  now.  I  have  been  more  calm  to-day,  though  in  a  half  dread 
of  not  continuing  so.     I  said  nothing  of  my  health  ;  I  know  nothing 

of  it  ;  you  will  hear  Severn's  account,  from .     I  must  leave 

oir.     You  bring  my  thoughts  too  near  to .     God  bless  you  ! 


Little  things,  that  at  other  times  might  have  been  well   passed 
over,  now  struck  his  susceptible  imagination  with  intense  disgust. 
He  could  not   bear  to  go  to  the  opera,  on  account  of  the  sentinels 
11* 


238  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 


who  stood  constantly  on  tlie  stage,  and  wliom  he  at  first  took  for 
parts  of  the  scenic  ctTect.  "  We  will  go  at  once  to  Rome,"  he 
said  ;  "  I  know  my  end  approaches,  and  the  continual  visible 
tyranny  of  this  government  prevents  mo  from  having  any  peace 
of  mind.  I  could  not  lie  quietly  here.  I  will  not  leave  even  my 
bones  in  the  midst  of  this  despotism." 

He  had  received  at  Naples  a  most  kind  letter  from  Mr.  Shel- 
ley, anxiously  inquiring  about  his  health,  offering  him  advice  as 
to  the  adaptation  of  diet  to  the  climate,  and  concluding  with  an 
urgent  invitation  to  Pisa,  where  he  could  insure  him  every  com- 
fort and  attention.  But  for  one  circumstance,  it  is  unfortunate 
that  this  offer  was  not  accepted,  as  it  might  have  spared  at  least 
some  annoyances  to  the  sufferer,  and  much  painful  responsibility, 
extreme  anxiety,  and  unrelieved  distress  to  his  friend. 

On  arriving  at  Rome,  he  delivered  the  letter  of  introduction 
already  mentioned,  to  Dr.  (now  Sir  James)  Clark,  at  that  time 
rising  into  high  repute  as  a  physician.  The  circumstances  of  the 
young  patient  were  such  as  to  insure  compassion  from  any  person  of 
feeling,  and  perhaps  sympathy  and  attention  from  superior  minds. 
But  the  attention  he  here  received  was  that  of  all  the  skill  and 
knowledge  that  science  could  confer,  and  the  sympathy  was  of 
the  kind  which  discharges  the  weight  of  obligation  for  gratuitous 
service,  and  substitutes  affection  for  benevolence  and  gratitude. 
All  that  wise  solicitude  and  delicate  thoughtfulnei'S  could  do  to 
licrht  up  the  dark  passages  of  mortal  sickness  and  soothe  the  pillow 
of  the  forlorn  stranger  was  done,  and,  if  that  was  little,  the  effort 
was  not  the  less.  In  the  history  of  most  professional  men  this  in- 
cident might  be  remarkable,  but  it  is  an  ordinary  sample  of  the 
daily  life  of  this  distinguished  physician,  who  seems  to  have  felt 
it  a  moral  duty  to  make  his  own  scientific  eminence  tlie  measure 
of  his  devotion  to  the  relief  and  solace  of  all  men  of  intellectual 
pursuits,  and  to  have  applied  his  beneficence  th.o  most  effectually 
to  those  whose  nervous  susceptibility  renders  them  the  least  fit  to 
endure  tiiat  physical  suffering  to  v/hich,  above  ail  men,  they  are 
constantly  exposed. 

The  only  other  introduction  Keats  had  with  him,  was  from 
Sir  T.  Lawrence  to  Canova,  but  the  time  was  gone  by  when  even 
Art  could  please,  and   his  shattered   nerves   refused   to  convey  to 


JOHN  KEATS.  239 


liis  intelligence  the  impressions  by  which  a  few  months  before  he 
would  have  been  rapt  into  ecstasy.  Dr.  Clark  procured  Keats  a 
lodging  iu  the  Piazza  di  Spagna,  opposite  to  his  own  abode  ;  it 
was  in  the  first  house  on  your  right  hand  as  you  ascend  the  steps 
of  the  "  Trinita  del  Monte."  Rome,  at  that  time,  was  far  from 
aflbrding  the  comforts  to  the  stranger  that  are  now  so  abundant, 
and  the  violent  Italian  superstitions  respecting  the  infection  of  all 
dangerous  disease,  rendered  the  circumstances  of  an  invalid  most 
harassing  and  painful.  Suspicion  tracked  him  as  he  grew  worse, 
and  countenances  darkened  round  as  the  world  narrowed  about 
him  :  ill-will  increased  just  when  sympathy  was  most  wanted,  and 
the  essential  loneliness  of  the  death-bed  was  increased  by  the 
alienation  of  all  other  men  ;  the  last  grasp  of  the  swimmer  for  life 
was  ruthlessly  cast  off  by  his  stronger  comrade,  and  the  affections 
that  are  wont  to  survive  the  bodj'^  were  crushed  down  in  one  com- 
mon dissolution.  At  least  from  this  desolation  Keats  was  saved 
by  the  love  and  care  of  Mr.  Severn  and  Dr.  Clark. 

I  have  now  to  give  the  last  letter  of  Keats  in  my  possession : 
probably  tiie  last  he  wrote.  One  phrase  in  the  commencement  of 
it  became  frequent  with  him ;  he  would  continually  ask  Dr. 
Clark,  "  When  will  this  posthumous  life  of  mine  come  to  an  end  ?" 
Yet  when  this  was  written,  hope  was  evidently  not  extinguished 
within  him,  and  it  does  appear  not  unlikely  that  if  the  soothing 
influences  of  climate  had  been  sooner  brought  to  bear  on  his  con- 
stitution, and  his  nervous  irritability  from  other  causes  been 
diminislied,  his  life  might  have  been  saved,  or  at  least,  considera- 
bly prolonged. 


Rome,  3Gth  Nove7nber,  1820. 
My  Dear  Buown, 

'Tis  the  most  difficult  thing  in  the  world  to  me  to  write  a  let- 
ter. .My  stomacli  continues  so  bad,  that  I  feel  it  worse  on  opening 
any  book, — yet  I  am  nmch  better  than  I  was  in  quarantine. 
Then  I  am  afraid  to  encounter  the  pro-ing  and  con-ing  of  any 
thing  interesting  to  me  in  England.  I  have  an  habitual  feeling  of 
my  real  life  having  passed,  and  that  I  am  leading  a  posthumous 
existence.     God  knows  Jiow  it  would  have  been — but   it  appears 


240  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

to  me — however,  I  will  not  speak  of  that  suliject.  I  must  have 
been  at  Bedhampton  nearly  at  the-  time  you  were  writing  to  me 
from  Chichester — how  unfortunate — and  to  pass  on  the  river  too  ! 
There  was  my  star  predominant !  I  cannot  answer  any  thing  in 
your  letter,  which  followed  me  from  Naples  to  Rome,  because  1 
am  afraid  to  look  it  over  again.  I  am  so  weak  (in  mind)  that  I 
cannot  bear  the  sight  of  any  handwriting  of  a  friend  I  love  so  much 
as  I  do  you.  Yet  I  ride  the  little  horse,  and,  at  my  worst,  even  in 
quarantine,  summoned  up  more  puns,  in  a  sort  of  desperation,  in 
one  week  than  in  any  year  of  my  life.  There  is  one  thought 
enough  to  kill  me;  I  have  been  well,  healthy,  alert,  &c.,  walk- 
ing with  her,  and  now — the  knowledge  of  contrast,  feeling  for 
light  and  shade,  all  that  information  (primitive  sense)  necessary 
for  a  poem,  are  great  enemies  to  the  recovery  of  the  stomach. 
There,  you  rogue,  I  put  you  to  the  torture ;  but  you  must  bring 
your  philosophy  to  bear,  as  I  do  mine,  really,  or  how  should  I  be 
able  to  live  ?  Dr.  Clark  is  very  attentive  to  me  ;  he  says,  there 
is  very  Ihtle  the  matter  with  my  lungs,  but  my  stomach,  he  says, 
is  very  bad.  I  am  well  disappointed  in  hearing  good  news  from 
George,  for  it  runs  in  my  head  we  shall  all  die  young.  I  have 
not  written  to  Reynolds  yet,  which  he  must  think  very  neglect- 
ful ;  being  anxious  to  send  him  a  good  account  of  my  health,  I 
have  delayed  it  from  week  to  week.  If  I  recover,  I  will  do  all  in 
my  power  to  correct  the  mistakes  made  during  sickness  ;  and  if  I 
should  not,  all  my  faults  will  be  forgiven.  Severn  is  very  well, 
though  he  leads  so  dull  a  life  with  me.  Remember  me  to  all 
friends,  and  tell  Haslam  I  should  not  have  left  London  without 
taking  leave  of  him,  but  from  being  so  low  in  body  and  mind. 
Write  to  George  as  soon  as  you  receive  this,,  and  tell  him  how  I 
am,  as  far  as  you  can  guess  :  and  also  a  note  to  my  sistt;r — who 
walks  about  my  imagination  like  a  ghost — slie  is  so  like  Tom.  I 
can  scarcely  bid  you  good-bye,  even  in  a  letter.  I  always  made 
an  awkward  bow. 

God  bless  you  I 
John  Keats. 

After  such  words  as  these,  the  comments  or  the  description  of 
any  mere  biographer  must  indeed  jar  upon   every  mind  duly   im- 


JOHN  KEATS.  241 


pressed  with  the  reality  of  this  sad  history.  The  voice,  which 
we  have  followed  so  long  in  all  its  varying,  yet  ever-true,  modu- 
lations of  mirth  and  melancholy,  of  wonder  and  of  wit,  of  activity 
and  anguish,  and  which  has  conferred  on  these  volumes  whatever 
value  they  may  possess,  is  now  silent,  and  will  not  be  heard  on 
earth  again.  The  earnest  utterances  of  the  devoted  friend,  who 
transmitted  to  other  listening  aflections  the  details  of  those  v.eary 
hours,  and  who  followed  to  the  very  last  the  ebb  and  flow  of  that 
wave  of  fickle  life,  remain  the  fittest  substitute  for  those  sincere 
revelations  which  can  come  to  us  no  more.  It  is  left  to  passages 
from  the  letters  of  Mr.  Severn  to  express  in  their  energetic  sim- 
plicity the  final  accidents  of  the  hard  catastrophe  of  so  much  that 
only  asked  for  healthy  life  to  be  fruitful,  useful,  powerful,  and 
happy.     Mr.  Severn  wrote  from  Rome  : — 

"Dec.  lAth. — I  fear  poor  Keats  is  at  his  worst.  A  most  un- 
looked-for relapse  has  confined  him  to  his  bed  with  every  chance 
against  him.  It  has  been  so  sudden  upon  what  I  thought  conva- 
lescence, and  without  any  seeming  cause,  that  I  cannot  calculate 
on  the  ne.\t  change.  1  dread  it,  for  his  suffering  is  so  great,  so 
continued,  and  his  fortitude  so  coinpletely  gone,  that  any  further 
change  must  make  him  delirious.  This  is  the  fifth  day,  and  I  see 
him  get  worse. 

'■•Dec.  llth,  4  A.  M. — Not  a  moment  can  I  be  from  him.  I 
sit  by  his  bed  and  read  all  day,  and  at  night  I  humor  him  in  all 
his  wanderings.  He  has  just  fallen  asleep,  the  first  sleep  for 
eight  nights,  and  now  from  mere  exhaustion.  I  hope  he  will  not 
wake  till  I  have  written,  for  I  am  anxious  you  should  know  the 
truth  ;  yet  I  dare  ngt  let  him  see  I  think  his  state  dangerous.  On 
the  morning  of  this  attack  he  was  going  on  in  good  spirits,  quite 
merrily,  when,  in  an  instant,  a  cough  seized  him,  and  he  vomited 
two  cupfuUs  of  blood.  In  a  moment  I  got  Dr.  Clark,  who  took 
eight  ounces  of  blood  from  his  arm — it  was  black  and  thick. 
Keats  was  much  alarmed  and  dejected.  What  a  sorrowful  day  J 
had  with  him  !  He  rushed  out  of  bed  and  said,  '  This  day  shall 
be  my  last;'  and  but  for  me  most  certainly  it  would.  The  blood 
broke  forth  in  similar  quaniity  the  next  morning,  and  he  was  bled 
again.     I  was  afterwards  so  fortunate  as  to  talk  him  into  a  little 


242  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

calmness,  and  he  soon  became  quite  patient.  Now  the  blood  has 
come  up  in  coughing  five  times.  Not  a  single  thing  will  he  di- 
gest, yet  he  keeps  on  craving  for  food.  Every  day  he  I'aves  he 
will  die  from  hunger,  and  I've  been  obliged  to  give  him  more  than 
was  allowed.  His  imagination  and  memory  present  every  thought 
to  him  in  horror ;  tlie  recollection  of  '  his  good  friend  Brown,'  of 
'  his  four  happy  weeks  spent  under  her  care,'  of  his  sister  and  bro- 
ther. O!  he  will  mourn  over  all  to  me  whilst  I  cool  his  burning 
forehead,  till  I  tremble  for  his  intellects.  How  can  he  be  '  Keats' 
again  after  all  this  ?  Yet  I  may  see  it  too  gloomily,  since  each 
coming  night  I  sit  up  adds  its  dismal  contents  to  my  mind. 

"  L)r.  Clark  will  not  say  much  ;  although  there  are  no  bounds 
to  his  attention,  yet  he  can  with  little  success  '  administer  to  a 
mind  diseased.'  All  that  can  be  done  he  does  most  kindly,  while 
his  lady,  like  himself  in  refined  feeling,  prepares  all  that  poor 
Keats  takes,  for  in  this  wilderness  of  a  place,  for  an  invalid,  there 
v/as  no  alternative.  Yesterday  Dr.  Clark  went  all  over  Rome 
for  a  certain  kind  offish,  and  just  as  I  received  it  carefully  dress- 
ed, Keats  was  taken  with  spitting  of  blood.  We  have  the  best 
opinion  of  Dr.  Clark's  skill :  he  comes  over  four  or  five  times 
a-day,  and  he  has  left  word  for  us  to  call  him  up,  at  any  moment, 
in  case  of  danger.  My  spirits  have  been  quite  pulled  down. 
These  wretched  Romans  have  no  idea  of  comfort-.  I  am  obliged 
to  do  every  thing  for  him.     I  wish  you  were  here. 

"  I  have  just  looked  at  him.     This  will  be  a  good  night. 

"  Jfl/j.  1.5^/1,  1821,  half-past  Eleven-r-^oov  Keats  has  just  fallen 
asleep.  I  have  watched  him  and  read  to  him  to  his  very  last 
wink  ;  he  has  been  saying  to  me — '  Severn,  I  can  see  under 
your  quiet  look  immense  contention — you  don't  know  what  you 
are  reading.  You  are  enduring  for  me  more  than  1  would  have 
you.  O  !  that  my  last  hour  was  come  !'  He  is  sinking  daily ; 
perhaps  another  three  weeks  may  lose  him  to  me  for  ever !  T 
made  sure  of  his  recovery  when  we  set  out.  I  was  selfish ;  I 
thought  of  his  value  to  me  ;  I  made  my  own  public  success  to 
depend  on  his  candor  to  me. 

"Torlonia,  the  banker,  has  refused  us  any  more  money  j  the 
bill  is  returned  unaccepted,  and  to-morrow  I  must  pay  my  last 
crown  for  this  cursed  lodging-place:  and  what  is  more,  if  he  dies 


JOHN  KEATS.  243 


all  the  beds  and  furniture  will  be  burnt  and  the  waHs  scraped, 
and  they  will  come  on  me  for  a  hundred  pounds  or  more  !  But, 
above  all,  this  noble  fellow  lying  on  the  bed  and  without  the  com- 
mon spiritual  comforts  that  many  a  rogue  and  fool  has  in  his  last 
moments!  If  I  do  break  down  it  will  be  under  this;  but  I  pray 
that  some  angel  of  goodness  may  yet  lead  iiim  through  this  dark 
wilderness. 

'•  If  I  could  leave  Keats  every  day  for  a  time  I  could  soon 
raise  money  by  my  painting,  but  he  will  not  let  me  out  of  his 
sight,  he  will  not  bear  the  fice  of  a  stranger.  I  would  rather  cut 
my  tongue  out  than  tell  him  I  must  get  the  money — that  would 
kill  him  at  a  word.  You  see  my  hopes  of  being  kept  by  the  Royal 
Academy  will  be  cut  off,  unless  1  send  a  picture  by  the  spring. 
I  have  written  to  Sir  T.  Lawrence.  I  have  got  a  volume  of  Jere- 
my Taylor's  works,  which  Keats  has  heard  me  read  to-night. 
This  is  a  treasure  indeed,  and  came  when  I  should  have  thought 
it  hopeless.  Why  may  not  other  good  things  come  ?  I  will  keep 
myself  up  with  such  hopes.  Dr.  Clark  is  still  the  same,  though 
he  knows  about  the  bill  :  he  is  afraid  the  next  change  will  be  to 
diarrhoea.  Keats  sees  all  this — his  knowledge  of  anatomy  makes 
every  change  tenfold  worse :  every  way  he  is  unfortunate,  yet 
every  one  offers  me  assistance  on  his  account.  He  cannot  read 
any  letters,  he  has  made  me  put  them  by  him  unopened.  They 
tear  him  to  pieces — he  dare  not  look  on  the  outside  of  any  more  : 
make  this  known. 

Feb.  ISlh. — I  have  just  got  your  letter  of  Jan.  15th.  The 
contrast  of  your  quiet  friendly  Hampstead  with  this  lonely  place 
and  our  poor  suffering  Keats,  brings  the  tears  into  my  eyes.  I 
■\\^sh,  many,  many  times,  that  he  had  never  left  you.  His  recov- 
ery would  have  been  impossible  in  England  ;  but  his  excessive 
.grief  has  made  it  equally  so  here.  In  your  ears  he  seemed  to  me 
*like  an  infant  in  its  mother's  arms  :  you  would  have  smoothed 
down  his  pain  by  variety  of  interests,  and  his  death  would  have 
been  eased  by  the  presence  of  many  friends.  Here,  with  one 
solitary  friend,  in  a  place  savage  for  an  invalid,  he  has  one  more 
pang  added  to  his  many — for  I  have  had  the  hardest  task  in  keep- 
ing from  him  my  painful  situation.  I  have  kept  him  alive  week 
after  week.     He  has  refused   all   food,  and  I  have   prepared  his 


244  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

meals  six  times  a  day,  till  he  had  no  excuse  left.  I  have  only 
dared  to  leave  him  wliiie  he  slept.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive 
what  his  sufferings  have  been  :  he  might,  in  his  anguish,  have 
plunged  into  the  grave  in  secret,  and  not  a  syllable  been  known 
about  him  :  this  reflection  alone  repays  me  for  all  I  have  done. 
Now,  he  is  still  alive  and  calm.  He  would  not  hear  that  he  was 
better:  the  thought  of  recovery  is  beyond  every  thing  dreadful  to 
him ;  we  now  dare  not  perceive  any  improvement,  for  the  hope 
of  death  seems  his  only  comfort.  He  talks  of  the  quiet  grave  as 
the  first  rest  he  can  ever  have. 

"  In  the  last  week  a  great  desire  for  books  came  across  his 
mind.  I  got  him  all  I  could,  and  three  days  this  charm  lasted, 
but  now  it  has  gone.  Yet  he  is  very  tranquil.  He  is  more  and 
more  reconciled  to  his  horrible  misfortunes. 

''Feb.  nth. — Little  or  no  change  has  taken  place,  excepting 
this  beautiful  one,  that  his  mind  is  growing  to  great  quietness 
and  peace.  I  find  this  change  has  to  do  with  the  increasing 
weakness  of  his  body,  but  to  me  it  seems  like  a  delightful  sleep  ; 
I  have  been  beating  about  in  the  tempest  of  his  mind  so  long. 
To-night  he  has  talked  very  much,  but  so  easily,  that  he  fell  at 
last  into  a  pleasant  sleep.  He  seems  to  have  happy  dreams.  This 
will  bring  on  some  change, — it  cannot  be  worse — it  may  be  bet- 
ter. Among  the  many  things  he  has  requested,  of  me  to-night, 
this  is  the  principal — that  on  his  grave-stone  shall  be  this  in- 
scription : — 

'  HERE    LIES    ONE    WHOSE    NAME    WAS    WRIT    IN    WATER.' 

You  will  understand  this  so  well  that  I  need  not  say  a  word 
about  it.  ft 

"  When  he  first  came  here  he  purchased  a  copy  of'  Alfieri,' 
but  put  it  down  at  the  second  page: — being  much  affected  at^llre^ 
lines 

'  Misera  me  !  soUievo  a  me  non  resta, 
Aliio  che  il  pianto,  ed  il  pianto  h  delitto  ." 

Now  that  I  know  so  much  of  his  grief,  I  do  not  wonder  at  it. 

"  Such  a  letter  has  come  !  I  gave  it  to  Keats  supposing  it  to 
be  one  of  yours,  but  it  proved  sadly  otherwise.     The  glance  at 


JOHN  KEATS.  245 


that  letter  tore  him  to  pieces  ;  the  effects  were  on  him  for  many 
days.  He  did  not  read  it — he  could  not — but  requested  me  to 
place  it  in  his  coffin,  together  with  a  purse  and  a  letlcr  (unopened) 
of  his  sister's  :*  since  then  he  has  told  me  7Wt  to  place  that  let- 
ter in  his  coffin,  only  his  sister's  purse  and  letter,  and  some  hair. 
I  however  persuaded  him  to  think  otherwise  on  this  point.  In 
his  most  irritable  state  he  sees  a  friendless  world  about  him,  with 
every  thing  that  his  life  presents,  and  especially  the  kindness  of 
others,  tending  to  his  melancholy  death. 

"  I  have  got  an  English  nurse  to  come  two  hours  every  other 
day,  so  that  I  am  quite  recovering  my  health.  Keats  seems  to 
like  her,  but  she  has  been  taken  ill  to-day  and  cannot  come.  In 
a  little  back-room  I  get  chalking  out  a  picture;  this,  with  swal- 
lowing a  little  Italian  every  day,  helps  to  keep  me  up.  The 
Doctor  is  delighted  with  your  kindness  to  Keats  ;f  he  thinks  him 
worse  ;  his  lungs  are  in  a  dreadful  state  ;  his  stomach  has  lost  all 
its  power.  Keats  knew  from  the  first  little  drop  of  blood  that  he 
must  die  ;  no  common  chance  of  living  was  left  him. 

"  Feb.  '22nd. — O  !  how  anxious  I  am  to  hear  from  you !  [Mr. 
Haslam.]  I  have  nothing  to  break  this  dreadful  solitude  but  let- 
ters. Day  after  day.  night  after  night,  here  I  am  by  our  poor 
dying  friend.  My  spirits,  my  intellect,  and  my  health  are  break- 
ing down.  I  can  get  no  one  to  change  with  me — no  one  to  relievo 
me.  All  run  away,  and  even  if  they  did  not,  Keats  would  not  do 
without  me. 

"  Last  night  I  thought  he  was  going  ;  I  could  hear  the  phlegm 
in  his  throat ;  he  bade  me  lift  him  up  in  the  bed  or  he  would  die 
with  pain.  I  watched  him  all  night,  expecting  him  to  be  suffo- 
cated at  every  cough.  This  morning,  by  the  pale  daylight,  the 
change  in  him  frightened  me:  he  has  sutd<  in  the  last  three  days 
to  a  most  ghastly  look.     Though  Dr.  Clark  has  prepared  me  for 

*  INIiss  Keats  shortly  after  married  Seiior  Llanos,  a  Spanish  gentleman  of 
liberal  politics  anJ  much  accomplishment,  ihe  author  of"  Don  Esteban,"  San- 
'  doval  the  Freemason,"'  and  other  spirited  illustrations  of  the  modern  history  of 
the  Peninsula. 

t  Probably  alluding  to  pecuniary  assistance  afforded  by  Mr.  Biown.  But 
before  this  the  friends  were  hel|)ed  out  of  their  immediate  difficulty  by  the 
generosity  of  .Mr.  Taylor. 


246  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  worst,  I  shall  he  ill  able  to  bear  it.  I  cannot  bear  to  be  set 
free  even  from  this  my  horrible  situation  by  the  loss  of  him. 

"  I  am  still  quite  precluded  from  painting  :  which  may  be  of 
consequence  'to  me.  Poor  Keats  has  me  ever  by  him,  and  sha- 
dows out  the  form  of  one  solidary  friend:  he  opens  his  eyes  in 
great  doubt  and  horror,  but  wlien  they  fall  upon  me,  they  close 
gently,  open  quietly  and  close  again,  till  he  sinks  to  sleep.  This 
thought  alone  would  keep  me  by  him  till  lie  dies  :  and  why  did  I 
say  I  was  losing  my  time  ?  The  advantages  I  have  gained  by 
knowing  John  Keats  are  double  and  treble  any  I  could  have  won 
by  any  other  occupation.     Farewell. 

"  Feh.  "Zlth. — He  is  gone  ;  he  died  with  the  most  perfect  ease 
— he  seemed  to  go  to  sleep.  On  the  twenty-third,  about  tour,  the 
approaches  of  death  came  on.  'Severn — I — lill  me  up — I  am 
dying — I  shall  die  easy  ;  don't  be  frightened — be  firm,  and  thank 
God  it  has  come.'  I  lifted  him  up  in  my  arms.  The  phlegm 
seemed  boiling  in  his  throat,  and  increased  until  eleven,  when  he 
gradually  sunk  into  death,  so  quiet,  that  I  still  thought  he  slept. 
I  cannot  say  more  now.  I  am  broken  down  by  four  nights' 
watching,  no  sleep  since,  and  my  poor  Keats  gone.  Three  days 
since  the  body  was  opened:  the  lungs  were  completelj^  gone. 
The  doctors  could  not  imagine  how  he  had  lived  these  two 
months.  I  followed  his  dear  body  to  the  grave- on  Monday,  with 
many  English.  They  take  much  care  of  me  here — I  must  else 
have  gone  into  a  fever.  I  am  better  now,  but  still  quite  dis- 
abled. 

"  The  police  have  been.  The  furniture,  the  walls,  the  floor, 
n-mst  all  be  destroyed  and  changed,  but  this  is  well  looked  to  by 
Dr.  Clark. 

"  The  letters  I  placed  in  the  coffin  with  my  own  hand. 

"  This  goes  by  tlie  first  post.  Some  of  my  kind  friends  v/ould 
else  have  written  before." 


After  the  death  of  Keats,  Mr.  Severn  received  the  following 
letter  from  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt,  in  the  belief  that  he  was  still  alive, 
and  thai  it  might  be  communicated  to  him.  But  even  while 
these  warm  words  were    being  written   in    his  own  old   home,  he 


JOHN  KEATS.  247 


IkuI  already  been  committed  to  tliat  distant  grave,  whicli  has  now 
become  a  place  of  pilgrimage  to  those  fellow-countrymen  who 
then  knew  not  what  they  had  lost,  and  who  are  ready,  too  late,  to 
lavish  on  his  name  the  love  and  admiration  that  might  once  have 
been  very  welcome. 

Vale  of  Health,  Hampstead,  March  8,  1821. 
Dear  Severn, 

Vou  have  concluded,  of  course,  that  I  have  sent  no 
Utters  to  Rome,  because  I  was  aware  of  the  effect  they  would 
have  on  Keats's  mind  ;  and  this  is  the  principal  cause, — for  be- 
sides what  I  have  been  told  of  his  emotions  about  letters  in  Italy, 
1  remember  his  telling  me  on  one  occasion,  that,  in  his  sick  mo- 
ments, he  never  wished  to  receive  another  letter,  or  ever  to  see 
another  face  however  friendly.  But  still  I  should  have  written 
to  you  had  I  not  been  almost  at  death's-door  myself.  You  will 
imagine  how  ill  I  have  been  when  you  hear  that  I  have  just 
begun  writing  again  for  the  "  Examiner"  and  "  Indicator,"  after 
an  interval  of  several  months,  during  which  my  flesh  wasted  from 
me  in  sickness  and  melancholy.  Judge  how  often  I  thought  of 
Keats,  and  with  what  feelings.  Mr.  Brown  tells  me  he  is  com- 
paratively calm  wow,  or  rather  quite  so.  If  he  can  bear  to  hear 
of  us,  pray  tell  him — but  he  knows  it  all  already,  and  can  put  it 
in  belter  language  than  any  man.  I  hear  he  does  not  like  to  be 
told  that  he  may  get  better ;  nor  is  it  to  be  wondered  at,  consider- 
ing his  firm  persuasion  that  he  shall  not  recover.  He  can  only 
regard  it  as  a  puerile  thing,  and  an  insinuation  that  he  cannot 
bear  to  think  he  shall  die.  But  if  tli's  persuasion  should  happen 
no  longer  to  be  so  strong  upon  him,  or  if  he  can  now  put  up  with 
pnch  attempts  to  console  him,  remind  him  of  what  I  have  said  a 
thousand  times,  and  that  I  still  (upon  my  honor,  Severn,)  think 
always,  that  I  have  seen  too  many  instances  of  recovery  from  ap- 
parently desperate  cases  of  consumption,  not  to  indulge  in  hope  ta 
the  very  last.  If  he  cannot  bear  this,  tell  him — tell  that  great 
poet  and  noble-hearted  man — that  Ave  shall  all  bear  his  memory 
in  the  most  precious  part  of  our  hearts,  and  that  the  world  shall 
bow  their  heads  to  it,  as  our  loves  do.     Or  if  this  again  will 


248  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

trouble  his  spirit,  tell  him  we  shall  never  cease  to  remember  and 
love  him,  and,  that  the  most  skeptical  of  us  has  faith  enough  in 
the  high  things  that  nature  puts  into  our  heads,  to  think  that  all 
who  are  of  one  accord  in  mind  and  heart,  are  journeying  to  one 
and  the  same  place,  and  shall  unite  somehow  or  other  again,  face 
to  face,  mutually  conscious,  mutually  delighted.  Tell  him  he  is 
only  before  us  on  the  road,  as  he  was  in  every  thing  else  ;  or, 
whether  you  tell  him  the  latter  or  no,  tell  him  the  former,  and 
add  that  we  shall  never  forget  he  was  so,  and  that  we  are  coming 
after  him.  The  tears  are  again  in  my  eyes,  and  1  must  not 
afford  to  shed  them.  The  next  letter  I  write  shall  be  more  to 
yourself,  and  a  little  more  refreshing  to  your  spirits,  which  we 
are  very  sensible  must  have  been  greatly  taxed.  But  whether 
our  friend  dies  or  not,  it  will  not  be  among  the  least  lofty  of  our 
recollections  L)y  and  by,  that  you  helped  to  smooth  the  sick-bed  of 
so  fine  a  being. 

God  bless  you,  dear  Severn. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

Leigh  Hunt. 

Keats  was  buried  in  the  Protestant  cemetery  at  Rome,  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  spots  on  which  the  eye  and  heart  of  man  can 
rest.  It  is  a  grassy  slope,  amid  verdurous  ruins  of  the  Honorian 
walls  of  the  diminished  city,  and  surmounted  by  the  pyramidal 
tomb  which  Petrarch  attributed  to  Remus,  but  whicli  antiquarian 
truth  has  ascribed  to  the  humbler  name  of  Cuius  Cestius,  a  Tri- 
bune of  the  people,  only  remembered  by  his  sepulchre.  In  one 
of  tliose  mental  voyages  into  the  past,  which  often  precede  death, 
Keats  had  told  Severn  that  "  he  thought  the  intensest  pleasure  he 
had  received  in  life  was  in  watching  tiie  growth  of  flowers  ;"  and 
another  time,  after  lying  a  while  still  and  peaceful,  he  said,  "  I 
feel  the  flowers  growing  over  me."  And  they  do  grow,  even  all 
the  winter  long — violets  and  daises  mingling  with  tlie  fresh 
hei'bage,  and,  in  the  words  of  Shelley,  "  making  one  in  love 
with  death,  to  think  that  one  should  be  buried  in  so  sweet  u 
place." 

Ten  weeks  after  the  close  of  his  lioly  work  of  friendship  and 
charity,  Mr.  Severn  wrote   to   Mr.   Ilaslam  : — "Poor  Keats  has 


JOHN  KEATS.  249 


now  his  wish— his  humble  wish  ;  he  is  at  peace  in  the  quiet  grave. 
I  walked  there  a  few  days  a;,'o,  and  found  the  daisies  had  grown 
all  over  it.  It  is  in  one  of  the  most  lovely  retired  spots  in  Rome, 
lou  cannot  have  such  a  place  in  England.  I  visit  it  with  a  de- 
licious melancholy  which  relieves  my  sadness.  When  I  recollect 
for  how  long  Keats  had  never  been  one  day  free  from  ferment  and 
torture  of  mind  and  body,  and  that  now  he  lies  at  rest  with  the 
flowers  he  so  desired  above  him,  with  no  sound  in  the  air  but  the 
tinkling  bells  of  a  few  simple  sheep  and  goats,  I  feel  indeed  grate- 
ful  that  he  is  here,  and  remember  how  earnestly  I  prayed  timt  his 
sufferings  might  end,  and  that  he  might  be  removed  from  a  world 
where  no  one  grain  of  comfort  remained  for  him." 

Thus  too  in  the  "  Adonais,"  that  most  successful  imitation  of 
the  spirit  of  the  Grecian  elegy,  devoted  to  the  memory  of  one  who 
had  restored  Grecian  mythology  to  its  domain  of  song,  this  place 
is  consecrated. 

"  Go  thou  to  Rome,— at  once  the  Paradise, 
The  grave,  tlie  city,  and  ihe  wildtrness  : 
And  where  its  wrecks  like  shattered  mountains  rise, 
And  flowering  weeds,  and  fragrant  copses  dress 
The  bones  of  Desolation's  nakedness  ; 
Pass,  till  the  Spirit  of  the  spot  shall  lead 
Thy  footsteps  to  a  slope  of  green  access. 
Where,  like  an  infant's  smile,  over  the  dead 
A  light  of  laughing  flowers  along  the  grass  is  spread, 

"  And  gray  walls  moulder  round,  on  which  dull  Time 
Feeds,  like  slow  fire  upon  a  hoary  brand  ; 
And  one  keen  pyramid  with  wedge  sublime. 
Pavilioning  the  dust  of  him  who  planned 
This  refuge  for  his  memory,  doth  stand 
Like  flame  transformed  to  marble  ;  and  beneath 
A  field  is  spread,  on  which  a  newer  band 
Have  pitched  in  Heaven's  smile  their  camp  of  death. 
Welcoming  him  we  lose  with  scarce  extinguished  breath. 

"  Here  pause  :  these  graves  are  all  too  young  as  yet 
To  have  outgrown  the  sorrow  which  consigned 
Its  charge  to  each ;  and,  if  the  seal  is  set 
Here,  on  one  fountain  of  a  mourning  mind, 


250  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Break  it  not  thou  !     Too  surely  shall  thou  find 
7~hiiie  own  well  full,  if  thou  returnest  home. 
Of  tears  and  gall.     From  thj  world's  bitter  wind 
Seek  shelter  in  the  shadow  of  the  tomb. 
What  Adonriis  is,  why  fear  we  to  become  1" 

And  a  i'ew  years  after  this  was  written,  in  the  extended  bury- 
ing-ground,  a  little  above  the  grave  of  Keats,  was  placed  another 
tomb-stone,  recording  that  below  rested  the  passionate  and  world- 
worn  heart  of  Shelley  himself — "Cor  Cordium."* 

Immediately  on  hearing  of  Keals's  death,  Siielley  expressed 
the  profoundest  sympathy  and  a  fierce  indignation  against  those 
whom  he  believed  to  have  hastened  it :  in  a  few  months  he  pro- 
duced the  incomparable  tribute  of  genius  to  genius,  which  is  of 
itself  the  compliment  of  and  the  apology  for  these  volumes. 

The  first  copy  of  the  "  Adonais"  (printed  at  Pisa)  was  sent 
with  the  following  letter  to  Mr.  Severn,  then  enjoying  the  travel- 
ing pension  of  the  Royal  Academy,  which  had  not  been  granted 
to  any  student  for  a  considerable  period.  He  resided  for  many 
years  at  Rome,  illustrating  the  City  and  Campagna  by  his  artistic 
fancy,  and  delighting  all  travelers  who  had  the  pleasure  of  his 
acquaintance  by  his  talents  and  his  worth.  Nor  was  the  self-de- 
votion of  his  youth  without  its  fruits  in  the  estimation  and  respect 
of  those  who  learned  the  circumstances  of  his  visit  to  Italy,  and 
above  all,  of  those  who  loved  the  genius,  revered  the  memory,  and 
mourned  the  destiny  of  Keats. 

FisA,  Nov.  23th,  lb'21. 
Dear  Sir, 

I  send  you  the  elegy  on  poor  Keats — and  I  wish  it  were 
better  worth  your  acceptance.  You  will  see,  by  the  preface, 
that  it  was  written  before  I  could  obtain  any  particular  account 
of  his  last  moments;  all  that  I  still  know,  was  communicated  to 
me  by  a  friend  who  had  derived  his  information  from  Colonel 
Finch ;  I  have  ventured  to  express,  as  I  felt,  the  respect  and 
admiration  which  your  conduct  towards  him  demands. 

*  The  Inscription. 


JOHN  KEATS.  251 


In  spite  of  liis  transcendent  genuis,  Keats  never  was,  nor 
never  will  be,  a  popular  poet ;  and  the  total  neglect  and  obscurity 
in  which  the  astonishing  remnants  of  his  mind  still  lie,  was  hardly 
to  be  dissipated  by  a  writer,  who,  however  he  may  differ  from 
Keats  in  more  important  qualities,  at  least  resembles  him  in  that 
accidental  one,  a  want  of  popularity, 

1  have  little  hope,  therefore,  that  the  poem  I  send  you  will 
excite  any  attention,  nor  do  I  feel  assured  that  a  crilical  notice  of 
his  writings  would  find  a  single  reader.  But  for  these  considera- 
tions, it  had  been  my  intention  to  collect  the  remnants  of  his  com- 
poshions,  and  to  have  published  them  with  a  Life  and  Criticism. 
Has  he  left  any  poems  or  writings  of  whatsoever  kind,  and  in 
whose  possession  are  they  ?  Perhaps  you  would  oblige  me  by 
information  on  this  point. 

Many  thanks  for  the  picture  you  promise  me  :  I  shall  consider 
it  among  the  most  sacred  relics  of  the  past.  For  my  part,  I  little 
expected,  when  I  last  saw  Keats  at  my  friend  Leigh  Hunt's,  that 
I  should  survive  him. 

Should  you  ever  pass  through  Pisa,  I  hope  to  have  the  plea- 
sure of  seeing  you,  and  of  cultivating  an  acquaintance  into 
something  pleasant,  begun  under  such  melancholy  auspices. 

Accept,  my  dear  sir,  the  assurance  of  my  highest  esteem,  and 
believe  me. 

Your  most  sincere  and  faithful  servant, 

Percy  B.  Shelley. 


The  last  few  pages  have  attempted  to  awaken  a  personal 
interest  in  the  story  of  Keats  almost  apart  from  his  literary  char- 
acter— a  personal  interest  founded  on  events  that  might  easily 
have  occurred  to  a  man  of  inferior  ability,  and  rather  affecting 
from  their  moral  than  intellectual  bearing.     But  now 


"  He  has  outsoared  the  shadow  of  our  night  ; 
Envy  and  calumny,  and  hate  and  pain, 
And  that  unrest  which  men  miscall  delight. 
Can  touch  him  not  and  torture  not  again  ; 
From  the  contagion  of  the  world's  slow  stain 


252  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

He  is  secure,  and  now  can  never  mourn 
A  heart  grown  cold,  a  head  grown  gray  in  vain  ; 
Nor,  when  ihe  spirit's  self  has  ceased  to  burn, 
With  sparkless  ashes  load  an  unlamented  urn  :" 

and,  ere  we  close  altogether  these  memorials  of  his  short  earthly 
being,  let  us  revert  to  the  great  distinctive  peculiarities  which 
singled  him  out  from  his  fellow-men  and  gave  him  his  rightful 
place  among  "the  inheritors  of  unfulfilled  renown." 

Let  any  man  of  literary  accomplishment,  though  without  the 
habit  of  writing  poetry,  or  even  much  taste  for  reading  it,  open 
"  Endymion  "  at  random,  (to  say  nothing  of  the  later  and  more 
perfect  poems,)  and  examine  the  characteristics  of  the  page  before 
him,  and  1  shall  be  surprised  if  he  does  not  feel  that  the  whole 
range  of  literature  hardly  supplies  a  parallel  phenomenon.  As  a 
psychological  curiosity,  perhaps  Chatterton  is  more  wonderful ; 
but  in  him  the  immediate  ability  displayed  is  rather  the  full  com- 
preliension  of  and  identification  with  the  old  model,  than  the 
effluence  of  creative  genius.  In  Keats,  on  the  contrary,  the 
originality  in  the  use  of  his  scanty  materials,  his  expansion  of 
them  to  the  proportions  of  his  own  imagination,  and  above  all,  his 
field  of  diction  and  expression  extending  so  far  beyond  his  knowledge 
of  literature,  is  quite  inexplicable  by  any  of  the  ordinary  processes 
of  mental  education.  If  his  classical  learning  had  been  deeper, 
his  seizure  of  the  full  spirit  of  Grecian  beauty  would  have  been 
less  surprising  ;  if  his  English  reading  had  been  more  extensive, 
his  inexhaustible  vocabulary  of  picturesque  and  mimetic  words 
could  more  easily  be  accounted  for  ;  but  here  is  a  surgeon's 
apprentice,  with  the  ordinary  culture  of  the  middle  classes,  rival- 
ing in  aesthetic  perceptions  of  antique  life  and  thought  the  most 
careful  scholars  of  his  time  and  country,  and  reproducing  these 
impressions  in  a  phraseology  as  complete  and  unconventional  as 
if  he  had  mastered  the  whole  history  and  the  frequent  variations 
of  the  English  tongue,  and  elaborated  a  mode  of  utterance  com- 
mensurate with  his  vast  ideas. 

The  artistic  absence  of  moral  purpose  may  offend  many 
readers,  and  the  just  harmony  of  tiie  coloring  may  appear  to 
others  a  displeasing  monotony,  but  I  think  it  impossible  to  lay  the 


JOHN  KEATS.  253 


book  down  without  feeling  that  almost  every  line  of  it  contains 
solid  gold  enough  to  be  beaten  out,  by  common  literary  manu- 
facturers, into  a  poem  of  itself.  Concentration  of  imagery,  the 
hitting  off  a  picture  at  a  stroke,  the  clear  decisive  word  that 
brings  the  thing  before  you  and  will  not  let  it  go,  are  the  rarest 
distinctions  of  the  early  exercise  of  the  fiiculties.  So  much  more 
is  usually  known  than  digested  by  sensitive  youth,  so  much 
more  felt  than  understood,  so  much  more  perceived  than  method- 
ized, that  diffusion  is  fairly  permitted  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
authorship,  and  it  is  held  to  be  one  of  the  advantages,  amid  some 
losses,  of  maturer  intelligence,  that  it  learns  to  fix  and  hold  the 
beauty  it  apprehends,  and  to  crystalize  the  dew  of  its  morning. 
Such  examples  to  the  contrary,  as  the  "  Windsor  Forest "  of 
Pope,  are  rather  scholastic  exercises  of  men  who  afterwards  be- 
came great,  than  the  first-fruits  of  such  genius,  while  all  Keats's 
poems  are  early  productions,  and  there  is  nothing  beyond  them 
but  the  thought  of  what  he  might  have  become.  Truncated  as  is 
this  intellectual  life,  it  is  still  a  substantive  whole,  and  the  com- 
plete statue,  of  which  such  a  fragment  is  revealed  to  us,  stands 
perhaps  solely  in  the  temple  of  the  imagination.  There  is  indeed 
progress,  continual  and  visible,  in  the  works  of  Keats,  but  it  is 
towards  his  own  ideal  of  a  poet,  not  towards  any  defined  and 
tangible  model.  All  that  we  can  do  is  to  transfer  that  ideal  to 
ourselves,  and  to  believe  that  if  Keats  had  lived,  that  is  what  he 
would  have  been. 

Contrary  to  the  expectation  of  Mr.  Shelley,  the  appreciation 
of  Keats  by  men  of  thought  and  sensibility  gradually  rose  after 
his  death,  until  he  attained  the  place  he  now  holds  among  the 
poets  of  his  country.  By  his  side  too  the  fame  of  this  his  friend 
and  eulogist  ascended,  and  now  they  rest  together,  associated  in 
the  history  of  the  achievements  of  the  human  imagination  ;  twin 
stars,  very  cheering  to  the  mental  mariner  tost  on  the  rough  ocean 
of  practical  life  and  blown  about  by  the  gusts  of  calumny  and 
misrepresentation,  but  who,  remembering  what  they  have  under- 
gone, forgets  not  that  he  also  is  divine. 

Nor  has  Keats  been  without  his  direct  influence  on  the  poeti- 
cal literature  that  succeeded  him.  The  most  noted,  and  perhaps 
the  most  original,  of  present  poets,  bears  more   analogy  to  him 

13 


254  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 

than  to  any  other  writer,  and  their  brotherhood  has  been  well  re- 
cognized, in  the  words  of  a  critic,  himself  a  man  of  redundant 
fancy,  and  of  the  widest  perception  of  what  is  true  and  beautiful, 
lately  cut  off  from  life  by  a  destiny  as  mysterious  as  that  which 
has  been  here  recounted.  Mr.  Sterling  writes  : — "  Lately,  I  have 
been  reading  again  some  of  Alfred  Tennyson's  second  volume, 
and  with  profound  admiration  of  his  truly  lyric  and  idyllic  genius. 
There  seems  to  me  to  have  been  more  epic  poAver  in  Keats,  that 
fiery  beautiful  meteor ;  but  they  are  two  most  true  and  great 
poets.  When  we  think  of  the  amount  of  the  recognition  they 
have  received,  one  may  well  bless  God  that  poetry  is  in  itself 
strength  and  joy,  whether  it  be  crowned  by  all  mankind,  or  left 
alone  in  its  own  magic  hermitage."  * 

And  this  is  in  truth  the  moral  of  the  tale.  In  the  life  which 
here  lies  before  us,  as  plainly  as  a  child's,  the  action  of  the  poetic 
faculty  is  most  clearly  visible  :  it  long  sustains  in  vigor  and  de- 
light a  temperament  naturally  melancholy,  and  which,  under 
such  adverse  circumstances,  might  well  have  degenerated  into 
angry  discontent :  it  imparts  a  wise  temper  and  a  courageous 
hope  to  a  physical  constitution  doomed  to  early  decay ,f  and  it 
confines  within  manly  affections  and  generous  passion  a  nature  so 
impressible  that  sensual  pleasures  and  sentimental  tenderness 
might  easily  have  enervated  and  debased  it.  There  is  no  defect 
in  the  picture  which  the  exercise  of  this  power -does  not  go  far  to 
remedy,  and  no  excellence  which  it  does  not  elevate  and  extend. 

One  still  graver  lesson  remains  to  be  noted.  Let  no  man, 
who  is  in  any  thing  above  his  fellows,  claim,  as  of  right,  to  be 
valued  or  understood  :  the  vulgar  great  are  comprehended  and 
adored,  because  they  are  in  reality  in  the  same  moral  plane  with 
those  who  admire  ;  but  he  who  deserves  the  higher  reverence 
must  himself  convert  the  worshiper.  The  pure  and  lofty  life  ; 
the  generous  and   tender  use  of  the  rare  creative  faculty  ;  the 

*  Sterling's  Essays  and  Tales,  p.  clxviii. 

t  Coleridge  in  page  89,  vol.  ii.,  of  his  "  Table  Talk,"  asserts  that,  when 
Keats  (whom  he  describes  as  "  a  loose,  slack,  not  well-dressed  youth  ")  met 
him  in  a  lane  near  Highgate,  and  they  shook  hands,  he  said  to  Mr.  Hunt, 
"  there  is  death  in  that  hand."  This  was  at  the  period  when  Keats  first 
knew  Mr.  Hunt,  and  was,  apparently,[^in  perfect  health. 


JOHN  KEATS.  255 


brave  endurance  of  neglect  and  ridicule  ;  the  strange  and  cruel 
end  of  so  much  genius  and  so  much  virtue  ;  these  are  the  lessons 
by  which  the  sympathies  of  mankind  must  be  interested,  and  their 
faculties  educated,  up  to  the  love  of  such  a  character  and  the 
comprehension  of  such  an  intelligence.  Still  the  lovers  and  scho- 
lars will  be  few  :  still  the  rewards  of  fame  will  be  scanty  and  ill- 
proportioned  :  no  accumulation  of  knowledge  or  series  of  expe- 
riences can  teach  the  meaning  of  genius  to  those  who  look  for  it 
in  additions  and  results,  any  more  than  the  numbers  studded 
round  a  planet's  orbit  could  approach  nearer  infinity  than  a  single 
unit.  The  world  of  thought  must  remain  apart  from  the  world  of 
action,  for,  if  they  once  coincided,  the  problem  of  Life  would  be 
solved,  and  the  hope,  which  we  call  heaven,  would  be  realized  on 
earth.     And  therefore  men 

"  Are  cradled  into  poetry  by  wrong : 

They  learn  in  suffering  what  they  teach  in  song." 


LITERARY  REMAINS 


OTHO    THE    GREAT 

A  TRAGEDY  IN  FIVE  ACTS. 


DRAMATIS  PERSON.^. 

Otho  the  Great,  Emperor  of  Germany. 

LuDOLPH,  his  Son. 

Conrad,  Duke  of  Franconia. 

Albert,  a  Knight,  favored  by  Otho. 

SiGiFRED,  an  Officer,  friend  of  Ludolpk^ 

Theodore,  >  ^^ 

CxONFRiD,     \Officers. 

Ethelbert,  an  Abbot. 
Gersa,  Prince  of  Hungary. 
An  Hungarian  Captain. 
Physician. 
Page. 

Nobles,  Knights,  Attendants,  and  Soldiers. 
Erjiinia,  Niece  of  Otho. 
Auranthe,  Conrad's  Sister. 
Ladies  and  Attendants. 
Scene. — The  Castle  of  Friedburg,  its  vicinity,  and  the  Hungarian 
Camp. 

Time.— 0«e  Day. 


ACT    I . 

Scene  I. — An  Apartment  in  the  Caslk. 
Enter  Conrad. 
So,  I  am  safe  emerged  from  these  broils  ! 
Amid  the  wreck  of  thousands  I  am  whole  ; 
For  every  crime  I  have  a  laurel-wreath, 
For  every  lie  a  lordship.     Nor  yet  has 


260  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

My  ship  of  fortune  furl'd  her  silken  sails, — 
Let  her  glide  on  !     This  danger'd  neck  is  saved, 
By  dextrous  policy,  from  the  rebel's  axe  ; 
And  of  my  ducal  palace  not  one  stone 
Is  bruised  by  the  Hungarian  petards. 
Toil  hard,  ye  slaves,  and  from  the  miser-earth 
Bring  forth  once  more  my  bullion,  treasured  deep, 
With  all  my  jewel'd  salvers,  silver  and  gold, 
And  precious  goblets  that  make  rich  the  wine. 
But  why  do  I  stand  babbling  to  myself  ? 
Where  is  Auranthe  ?     I  have  news  for  her 
Shall— 

Enter  Auranthe. 

Auranthe.  Conrad  !  what  tidings  ?     Good,  if  I  may  guess 
From  your  alert  eyes  and  high-lifted  brows. 
What  tidings  of  the  battle  ?     Albert  ?     Ludolph  ?     Otho  ? 

Conrad.  You  guess  aright.     And,  sister,  slurring  o'er 
Our  by-gone  quarrels,  I  confess  my  heart 
Is  beating  with  a  child's  anxiety, 
To  make  our  golden  fortune  known  to  you. 

Auranthe.  So  serious  ? 

Conrad.  Yes,  so  serious,  that  before 

I  utter  even  the  shadow  of  a  hint 
Concerning  what  will  make  that  sin-worn  cheek 
Blush  joyous  blood  through  every  lineament, 
You  must  make  here  a  solemn  vow  to  me. 

Auranthe.  I  pr'ythee,  Conrad,  do  not  overact 
The  hypocrite.      What  vow  would  you  impose  ? 

Conrad.  Trust  me  for  once.     That  you  may  be  assured 
'Tis  not  confiding  in  a  broken  reed, 
A  poor  court-bankrupt,  outwitted  and  lost, 
Revolve  these  facts  in  your  acutest  mood. 
In  such  a  mood  as  now  you  listen  to  me  : 
A  few  days  since,  I  was  an  open  rebel, — 
Against  the  Emperor  had  suborn'd  his  son, — 
Drawn  off  his  nobles  to  revolt, — and  shown 
Contented  fools  causes  for  discontent. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  261 


Fresh  hatch'd  in  my  ambition's  eagle-nest ; 
So  thrived  I  us  a  rebel, — and,  behold  ! 
Now  I  am  Otho's  favorite,  his  dear  friend, 
His  right  hand,  his  brave  Conrad  ! 

Auranthe.  I  confess 

You  have  intrigued  with  these  unsteady  times 
To  admiration.     But  to  be  a  favorite  ! 

Conrad.  I  saw  my  moment.     The  Hungarians, 
Collected  silently  in  holes  and  corners, 
Appear'd,  a  sudden  host,  in  the  open  day. 
I  should  have  perish'd  in  our  empire's  wreck. 
But,  calling  interest  loyalty,  swore  faith 
To  most  believing  Otho ;   and  so  help'd 
His  blood-stain 'd  ensigns  to  the  victory 
In  yesterday's  hard  fight,  that  it  has  turn'd 
The  edge  of  his  sharp  wrath  to  eager  kindness. 

Auranthe.  So  far  ^^ourself.     But  what  is  this  to  me 
More  than  that  I  am  glad  ?     I  gratulate  you. 

Conrad.  Yes,  sister,  but  it  does  regard  you  greatly. 
Nearly,  momentously, — aye,  painfully  ! 
Make  me  this  vow — 

Auranthe.  Concerning  whom  or  what  ? 

Conrad.  Albert  ! 

Auranthe.  I  would  inquire  somewhat  of  him  : 

You  had  a  letter  from  me  touching  him  ? 
No  treason  'gainst  his  head  in  deed  or  word  ! 
Surely  you  spared  him  at  my  earnest  prayer  ? 
Give  me  the  letter — it  should  not  exist ! 

Conrad.  At  one  pernicious  chargc^f  the  enemy, 
I,  for  a  moment-whiles,  was  prisoner  ta'en 
And  rifled, — stuff !  the  horses'  hoofs  have  minced  it ! 

Auranthe.  He  is  alive  ? 

Conrad.  He  is  !  but  here  make  oath 
To  alienate  him  from  your  .scheming  brain, 
Divorce  him  from  your  solitary  thoughts. 
And  cloud  him  in  such  utter  banishment, 
That  when  his  person  meets  again  your  eye. 
Your  vision  shall  quite  lose  its  memory, 
12* 


262  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

And  wander  past  him  as  through  vacancy. 

Ati.ra7ithe.  I'll  not  be  perjured. 

Conrad.  No,  nor  great,  nor  mighty  ; 

You  would  not  wear  a  crown,  or  rule  a  kingdom. 
To  you  it  is  indifferent. 

Auranthe.  What  means  this  ? 

Conrad.  You'll  not  be  perjured  !     Go  to  Albert  then, 
That  camp-mushroom — dishonor  of  our  house. 
Go,  page  his  dusty  heels  upon  a  march, 
Furbish  his  jingling  baldric  while  he  sleeps, 
And  share  his  mouldy  ration  in  a  siege. 
Yet  stay, — perhaps  a  charm  may  call  you  back. 
And  make  the  widening  circlets  of  your  eyes 
Sparkle  with  healthy  fevers. — The  Emperor 
Hath  given  consent  that  you  should  marry  Ludolph  ! 

Auranthe.     Can  it  be,  brother  ?     For  a  golden  crown 
With  a  queen's  awful  lips  I  doubly  tliank  you  ! 
This  is  to  wake  in  Paradise  !     Farewell 
Thou  clod  of  yesterday — 'twas  not  myself! 
Not  till  this  moment  did  I  ever  feel 
My  spirit's  faculties  !     I'll  flatter  you 
For  this,  and  be  you  ever  proud  of  it ; 
Thou,  Jove-like,  struck'dst  thy  forehead, 
And  from  the  teeming  marrow  of  thy  braiii 
I  spring  complete  Minerva !  but  the  prince — 
His  highness  Ludolph — where  is  he? 

Conrad.  I  know  not : 

When,  lackeying  my  counsel  at  a  beck, 
The  rebel  lords,  off  bended  knees,  received 
The  Emperor's  pardon,  Ludolph  kept  aloof, 
Sole,  in  a  stiff,  fool-hardy,  sulky  pride ; 
Yet,  for  all  this,  I  never  saw  a  father 
In  such  a  sickly  longing  for  his  son. 
We  shall  soon  see  him,  for  the  Emperor 
He  will  be  here  this  morning. 

Auranthe.  That  I  heard 

Among  the  midnight  rumors  from  the  camp. 

Conrad.     You  give  up  Albert  to  me  ? 


[OTHO  THE  GREAT.  263 


Auranfhe.  Harm  him  not ! 

E'en  for  his  highness  Ludolph's  sceptry  hand, 
I  would  not  Albert  suffer  any  wrong. 

Conrad.     Have  I  not  labored,  plotted — ? 

Auranthe.  See  you  spare  him  : 

Nor  be  pathetic,  my  kind  benefactor  ! 
On  all  the  many  bounties  of  your  hand, — 
'Twas  for  yourself  you  labored — not  for  me ! 
Do  you  not  count,  when  I  am  queen,  to  take 
Advantage  of  your  chance  discoveries 
Of  my  poor  secrets,  and  so  hold  a  rod 
Over  my  life  ? 

Conrad.         Let  not  this  slave — this  villain — 
Be  cause  of  feud  between  us.     See  !  he  comes  ! 
Look,  woman,  look,  your  Albert  is  quite  safe  ! 
In  haste  it  seems.     Now  shall  I  be  in  the  way, 
And  wish'd  with  silent  curses  in  my  grave, 
Or  side  by  side  with  'whelmed  mariners. 

Enter  Albert. 

Albert .  Fair  on  your  graces  fall  this  early  morrow ! 
So  it  is  like  to  do,  without  my  prayers, 
For  your  right  noble  names,  like  favorite  tunes, 
Have  flxllen  full  frequent  from  our  Emperor's  lips. 
High  commented  with  smiles. 

Auranthe.  Noble  Albert! 

Conrad  [aside).  Noble ! 

Auranthe.  Such  salutation  argues  a  glad  heart 
In  our  prosperity.     We  thank  you,  sir. 

Albert.  -  Lady ! 

O,  would  to  Heaven  your  poor  servant 
Could  do  you  better  service  than  mere  words  ! 
But  1  have  other  greeting  than  mine  own, 
From  no  less  man  than  Otho,  who  has  sent 
This  ring  as  pledge  of  dearest  amity  ; 
'Tis  chosen  I  hear  from  Hymen's  jewelry. 
And  you  will  prize  it,  lady,  I  doubt  not, 
Beyond  all  pleasures  past,  and  all  to  come. 
To  you  great  duke — 


264  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Conrad.  To  me  !     What  of  nie,  ha  ? 

Albert.  What  pleased  your  grace  to  say  ? 

Conrad.  Your  message,  sir  ! 

Albert.  You  mean  not  this  to  me  ? 

Conrad.  Sister,  this  way  ; 

For  there  shall  be  no  "  gentle  Alberts  "  now,  \^Aside. 
No  "  sweet  Auranthes  !" 

[Exeunt  Conrad  and  Auranthe. 
Albert  (solus).  The  duke  is  out  of  temper ;   if  he  knows 
More  than  a  brother  of  a  sister  ought, 
I  should  not  quarrel  with  his  peevishness. 
Auranthe — Heaven  preserve  her  always  fair  ! — 
Is  in  the  heady,  proud,  ambitious  vein  ; 
I  bicker  not  with  her, — bid  her  farewell ! 
She  has  taken  flight  from  me,  then  let  her  soar, — 
He  is  a  fool  who  stands  at  pining  gaze  ! 
But  for  poor  Ludolph,  he  is  food  for  sorrow : 
No  leveling  bluster  of  my  licensed  thoughts. 
No  military  swagger  of  my  mind. 
Can  smother  from  myself  the  wrong  I've  done  him, — 
Without  design  indeed, — yet  it  is  so, — 
And  opiate  for  the  conscience  have  I  none !  [Exit. 


Scene  II. — The  Court-yard  of  the  Castle. 

Martial  Music.  Enter,  from  the  outer  gate,  Otho,  JVubles,  Knights, 
and  Attendants.  The  Soldiers  halt  at  the  gate,  with  Banners  in 
sight. 

Otho.  Where  is  my  noble  Herald  ? 

[Enter  Coxt.ad,  from  the  Castle,  attended  by  two  Knights  and  Servants. 
Albert  following. 

Well,  hast  told 
Auranthe  our  intent  imperial  ? 
Lest  our  rent  banners,  too  o'  the  sudden  shown, 
Should  fright  her  silken  casements,  and  dismay 
Her  household  to  our  lack  of  entertainment. 
A  victory ! 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  265 


Conrad.     God  save  illustrious  Otho  ! 

Otho.  Aye,  Conrad,  it  will  pluck  out  all  gray  hairs; 
It  is  the  best  physician  for  the  spleen  ; 
The  courtliest  inviter  to  a  feast  ; 
The  subtlest  excuser  of  small  faults  ; 
And  a  nice  judge  in  the  age  and  smack  of  wine. 

[Enter  from  the  Castle,  Av^K^TWE,  followed  hy   Pages,  holding  up   her 
robes,  and  a  train  of  Women.     She  kneels. 

Hail  my  sweet  hostess  !  I  do  thank  the  stars. 

Or  my  good  soldiers,  or  their  ladies'  eyes. 

That,  after  such  a  merry  battle  fought, 

I  can,  all  safe  in  body  and  in  soul, 

Kiss  your  fair  hand  and  lady  fortune's  too. 

My  ring  !  now,  on  my  life,  it  doth  rejoice 

These  lips  to  feel  't  on  this  soft  ivory ! 

Keep  it,  my  brightest  daughter ;  it  may  prove 

The  little  prologue  to  a  line  of  kings. 

I  strove  against  thee  and  my  hot-blood  son, 

Dull  blockhead  that  I  was  to  be  so  blind, 

But  now  my  sight  is  clear  ;  forgive  me,  lady. 

Auranthe.  My  lord,  I  was  a  vassal  to  your  frown, 
And  now  your  favor  makes  me  but  more  humble  ; 
In  w-intry  winds  the  simple  snow  is  safe. 
But  fadeth  at  the  greeting  of  the  sun  : 
Unto  thine  anger  I  might  well  have  spoken, 
Taking  on  me  a  woman's  privilege. 
But  this  so  sudden  kindness  makes  me  dumb. 

Otho.  What  need  of  this?     Enough,  if  you  will  be 
A  potent  tutoress  to  my  wayward  boy. 
And  teach  him,  what  it  seems  his  nurse  could  not, 
To  say,  for  once,  I  thank  you !     Sigifred  ! 

Albert.  He  has  not  yet  returned,  my  gracious  liege. 

Otho.   What  then  !  No  tidings  of  my  friendly  Arab  ? 

Conrad.  None,  mighty  Otho. 

[To  one  of  his  Knights  icho  goes  out. 
Send  forth  instantly 
An  hundred  horsemen  from  my  honored  gates, 


266  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

To  scour  the  plains  and  search  the  cottages. 
Cry  a  reward,  to  him  who  shall  first  bring 
News  of  that  vanished  Arabian, 
A  full-heaped  helmet  of  the  purest  gold. 

Otho.  More  thanks,  good  Conrad ;   for,  except  my  son's. 
There  is  no  face  I  rather  would  behold 
Than  that  same  quick-eyed  pagan's.     By  the  saints, 
This  coming  night  of  banquets  must  not  light 
Her  dazzling  torches  ;  nor  the  music  breathe 
Smooth,  without  clashing  cymbal,  tones  of  peace 
And  in-door  melodies  ;  nor  the  ruddy  wine 
Ebb  spouting  to  the  lees;  if  I  pledge  not. 
In  my  first  cup,  that  Arab  ! 

Albert.  Mighty  Monarch, 

I  wonder  not  this  stranger's  victor-deeds 
So  hang  upon  your  spirit.     Twice  in  the  fight 
It  was  my  chance  to  meet  his  olive  brow. 
Triumphant  in  the  enemy's  shatter'd  rhomb  ; 
And,  to  say  truth,  in  any  Christian  arm 
I  never  saw  such  prowess. 

Otho.  Did  you  ever  ? 

O,  'tis  a  noble  boy  ! — tut ! — what  do  I  say  ? 
I  mean  a  triple  Saladin,  whose  eyes. 
When  in  the  glorious  scuffle  they  met  mine, " 
Seem'd  to  say — "  Sleep,  old  man,  in  safety  sleep  ; 
I  am  the  victory  !" 

Conrad.  Pity  he's  not  here. 

Oiho.  And  my  son  too,  pity  he  is  not  here. 
Lady  Auranthe,  I  would  not  make  you  blush. 
But  can  you  give  a  guess  where  Ludolph  is  ? 
Know  you  not  of  him  ? 

Auranthe.  Indeed,  my  liege,  no  secret — 

Otho.  Nay,  nay,  without  more  words,  dost  know  of  Iiim  ? 

Auranthe.  I  would  I  were  so  over-fortunate. 
Both  for  his  sake  and  mine,  and  to  make  glad 
A  father's  ears  with  tidings  of  liis  son. 

Otho.  I  see  'tis  like  to  be  a  tedious  day. 
Were  Theodore  and  Gonfrid  and  the  rest 
Sent  forth  with  my  commands  ? 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  267 


Albert.  Aye,  my  lord. 

Otho.  And  no  news  !  No  news  !  'Faith  !  'tis  very  strange 
He  thus  avoids  us.     Lady,  is't  not  strange  ? 
Will  he  be  truant  to  you  too  ?     It  is  a  shame. 

Conrad.   Wilt  please  your  highness  enter,  and  accept 
The  unworthy  welcome  of  your  servant's  house  ? 
Leaving  your  cares  to  one  whose  diligence 
May  in  few  hours  make  pleasures  of  them  all. 

Otiio.  Not  so  tedious,  Conrad.     No,  no,  no, — 
1  must  see  Ludolph  or  the — What's  that  shout? 

Voices  without.  Huzza  !  huzza  !  Long  live  the  Emperor  ! 

Other  voices.  Fall  back  !     Away  there  ! 

Otho.  Say  what  noise  is  tliat  ? 

[Albert  ofZranc/nir/rom  the  hack  of  the  Stage,  whither  he  had  hastened 
on  hearing  the  cheers  of  the  soldiery. 

Albert.  It  is  young  Gersa,  the  Hungarian  prince, 
Pick'd  like  a  red  stag  from  the  fallow  herd 
Of  prisoners.     Poor  prince,  forlorn  he  steps, 
Slow,  and  demure,  and  proud  in  his  despair. 
If  I  may  judge  by  his  so  tragic  bearing, 
His  eye  not  downcast,  and  his  folded  arm, 
He  doth  this  moment  wish  himself  asleep 
Among  his  fallen  captains  on  yon  plains. 

Enter  Gersa,  in  chains,  and  guarded. 

Otho.  Well  said,  Sir  Albert. 

Gersa.  Not  a  word  of  greeting, 

No  welcome  to  a  princely  visitor. 
Most  mighty  Otho  ?     Will  not  my  great  host 
Vouchsafe  a  syllable,  before  he  bids 
His  gentlemen  conduct  me  with  all  care 
To  some  securest  lodging — cold  perhaps  ! 

Otho.    What  mood  is  this  ?      Hath  fortune  touch'd    thy 
brain  ? 

Gersa.   O  kings  and  princes  of  this  fev'rous  world, 
AVhat  abject  things,  what  mockeries  must  ye  be. 
What  nerveless  minions  of  safe  palaces ! 
When  here,  a  monarch,  whose  proud  foot  is  used 
To  fallen  princes'  necks,  as  to  his  stirrup, 


268  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Must  needs  exclaim  that  I  am  mad  forsooth, 
Because  I  cannot  flatter  with  bent  knees 
My  conqueror ! 

Otho.  Gersa,  I  think  you  wrong  me  : 

I  think  I  have  a  better  fame  abroad. 

Gersa.  I  pr'ythee  m(jck  me  not  with  gentle  speech, 
But,  as  a  favor,  bid  me  from  thy  presence; 
Let  me  no  longer  be  the  wondering  food 
Of  all  these  eyes  ;  pr'ythee  command  me  hence  ! 

Otho.  Do  not  mistake  me,  Gersa.     That  you  may  not, 
Come,  fair  Auranthe,  try  if  your  soft  hands 
Can  manage  those  hard  rivets  to  set  free 
So  brave  a  prince  and  soldier. 

Auranthe  [sets  him  free).  Welcome  task  ! 

Gersa.  I  am  wound  up  in  deep  astonishment ! 
Thank  you,  fair  lady.     Otho  !  emperor  ! 
You  rob  me  of  myself;  my  dignity 
Is  now  your  infant  ;   I  am  a  weak  child. 

Otho.  Give  me  your  hand,  and  let  this  kindly  grasp 
Live  in  our  memories. 

Gersa.  In  mine  it  will. 

I  blush  to  think  of  my  unchasten'd  tongue  ; 
But  I  was  haunted  by  the  monstrous  gliost 
Of  all  our  slain  battalions.     Sire,  reflect, 
And  pardon  you  will  grant,  that,  at  this  hour, 
The  bruised  remnants  of  our  stricken  camp 
Are  huddling  undistinguished,  my  dear  friends. 
With  common  thousands,  into  shallow  graves. 

Otho.  Enough,  most  noble  Gersa.     You  are  free 
To  cheer  the  brave  remainder  of  your  host 
By  your  own  healing  presence,  and  that  too. 
Not  as  their  leader  merely,  but  their  king  ; 
For,  as  1  hear,  the  wily  enemy. 
Who  eas'd  the  crownet  from  your  infant  brows. 
Bloody  Taraxa,  is  among  the  dead. 

Gersa.  Then  I  retire,  so  generous  Otho  please, 
Bearing  with  me  a  weight  of  benefits 
Too  heavy  to  be  borne. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  269 


Otho.  It  is  not  so  ; 

Still  understand  me,  King  of"  Hungary, 
Nor  judge  my  open  purposes  awry. 
Though  I  did  hold  you  high  in  my  esteem 
For  your  self's  sake,  I  do  not  personate 
The  stage-play  emperor  to  entrap  applause, 
To  set  the  silly  sort  o'  the  world  agape, 
And  make  the  politic  smile;   no,  I  have  heard 
How  in  the  Council  you  condemn'd  this  war. 
Urging  the  perfidy  of  broken  faith, — 
For  that  I  am  your  friend. 

Gersa.  If  ever,  sire, 

You  are  my  enemy,  I  dare  here  swear 
'Twill  not  be  Gersa's  fault.     Otho,  farewell ! 

Otho.   Will  you  return..  Prince,  to  our  banqueting? 

Gersa.  As  to  my  father's  board  I  will  return. 

Otho.   Conrad,  with  all  due  ceremony,  give 
The  prince  a  regal  escort  to  his  camp  ; 
Albert,  go  thou  and  bear  him  company. 
Gersa,  farewell  ! 

Gersa.  All  happiness  attend  you  ! 

Otho.   Return  with  what  good  speed  you  may  ;   for  soon 
We  must  consult  upon  our  terms  of  peace. 

[Exeicnl  Gersa  and  Albert  icith  others. 

And  thus  a  marble  column  do  I  build 

To  prop  my  empire's  dome.     Conrad,  in  thee 

I  have  another  steadfast  one,  to  uphold 

The  portals  of  my  state  ;   and,  for  my  own 

Pre-eminence  and  safety,  I  will  strive 

To  keep  thy  strength  upon  its  pedestal. 

For,  without  thee,  this  day  I  might  have  been 

A  show. monster  about  the  streets  of  Prague, 

In  ch  ins,  as  just  now  stood  that  noble  prince  : 

And  then  to  me  no  mercy  had  been  shown. 

For  when  the  conquer'd  lion  is  once  dungeoned. 

Who  lets  him  forth  again  ?  or  dares  to  give 

An  old  lion  sugar-cakes  of  mild  reprieve  ? 


270  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Not  to  thine  ear  alone  T  make  confession, 

But  to  all  here,  as,  by  experience, 

I  know  how  the  great  basement  of"  all  power 

Is  frankness,  and  a  true  tongue  to  the  world ; 

And  how  intriguing  secrecy  is  proof 

Of  fear  and  weakness,  and  a  hollow  state. 

Conrad,  I  owe  thee  much. 

Conrad.  To  kiss  that  hand, 

My  emperor,  is  ample  recompense, 
For  a  mere  act  of  duty. 

Otho.  Thou  art  wrong  ; 

For  what  can  any  man  on  earth  do  more  ? 
We  will  make  trial  of  your  house's  welcome, 
My  bright  Aurantlie  ! 

Conrad.  How  is  Friedburg  honored  ! 

Enter  Eehelbert  and  six  Menks. 

Ethelhert.  The  benison  of  heaven  on  your  head, 
Imperial  Otho ! 

Otho.  Who  stays  me  ?  Speak  !  Quick  ! 

Ethelhert.  Pause  but  one  moment,  mighty  conqueror ! 
Upon  the  threshold  of  this  house  of  joy. 

Otho.  Pray,  do  not  prose,  good  Ethelhert,  but  speak 
What  is  your  purpose. 

Ethelhert.  The  restoration  of  some  captive  maids, 
Devoted  to  Heaven's  pious  ministries. 
Who,  driven  forth  from  their  religious  cells, 
And  kept  in  thraldom  by  our  enemy. 
When  late  this  province  was  a  lawless  spoil, 
Still  "wecp  amid  the  wild  Hungarian  camp, 
Though  hemm'd  around  by  thy  victorious  arms. 

Otho.  Demand  the  holy  sisterhood  in  our  name 
From  Gersa's  tents.     Farewell,  old  Ethelhert. 

Ethelhert.  The  saints  will  bless  you  for  this  pious  care. 

Otho.  Daughter,  your  hand  ;   Ludolph's  would  fit  it  best. 

Conrad.  Ho  !  let  the  music  sound  ! 

{Music.     Ethelbert   raises   his  hands,   as  in  benediction  of   Otho. 
Exeunt  severally.     The  scene  closes  on  them. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  271 

SCENE  III. — The  Counlry,  jvith  the  Castle  in  the  distance. 
Enter  Ludolph  a7id  Sigifred. 

Ludolph.  You  have  my  secret;  let  it  not  be  breath'd. 

Sigifred.  Still  give  me  leave  to  wonder  that  the  prince, 
Ludolph,  and  the  swift  Arab  are  the  same ; 
Still  to  rejoice  that  'twas  a  German  arm 
Death  doing  in  a  turban'd  masquerade. 

Ludolph.  The  emperor  must  not  know  it,  Sigifred. 

Sigifred.  I  pr'ythee  why  ?     What  happier  hour  of  time 
Could  thy  pleased  star  point  down  upon  from  heaven 
With  silver  index,  bidding  thee  make  peace  ? 

Ludolph.  Still  it  must  not  be  known,  good  Sigifred ; 
The  star  may  point  oblique. 

Sigifred.  If  Otho  knew 

His  son  to  be  that  unknown  Mussulman, 
After  whose  spurring  heels  he  sent  me  forth, 
With  one  of  his  well-pleased  Olympian  oaths, 
The  charters  of  man's  greatness,  at  this  hour 
He  would  be  watching  round  the  castle  walls, 
And,  like  an  anxious  warder,  strain  his  sight 
For  the  first  glimpse  of  such  a  son  return'd — 
Ludolph,  that  blast  of  the  Hungarians, 
That  Saracenic  meteor  of  the  fight, 
That  silent  fury,  whose  fell  scimitar 
Kept  danger  all  aloof  from  Otho's  head. 
And  left  him  space  for  wonder. 

Ludolph.  Say  no  more. 

Not  as  a  swordsman  would  I  pardon  claim. 
But  as  a  son.     The  bronze  centurion. 
Long  toil'd  in  foreign  wars,  and  whose  high  deeds 
Are  shaded  in  a  forest  of  tall  spears. 
Known  only  to  his  troop,  hath  greater  plea 
Of  favor  with  my  sire  than  I  can  have. 

Sigifred.  My  lord,  forgive  me  that  I  cannot  see 
How  this  proud  temper  with  clear  reason  squares. 
What  made  you  then,  with  such  an  anxious  love. 


272  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Hover  around  that  life,  whose  bitter  days 
You  vext  with  bad  revolt  ?     Was  't  opium, 
Or  the  mad-fumed  wine  ?     Nay,  do  not  frown, 
I  rather  would  grieve  with  you  than  upbraid. 

Ludolph.  I  do  believe  you.     No,  'twas  not  to  make 
A  father  his  son's  debtor,  or  to  heal 
His  deep  heart-sickness  for  a  rebel  child. 
'Twas  done  in  memory  of  my  boyish  days. 
Poor  cancel  for  his  kindness  to  my  youth. 
For  all  his  calming  of  my  childish  griefs, 
And  all  his  smiles  upon  my  merriment. 
No,  not  a  thousand  foughten  fields  could  sponge 
Those  days  paternal  from  my  memory, 
Though  now  upon  my  head  he  heaps  disgrace. 

Sigifred.  My  prince,  you  think  too  harshly — 

Ludolph.  Can  I  so  ? 

Hath  he  not  gall'd  my  spirit  to  the  quick  ? 
And  with  a  sullen  rigor  obstinate 
Pour'd  out  a  phial  of  wrath  upon  my  faults  ? 
Hunted  me  as  the  Tartar  does  the  boar, 
Di'iven  me  to  the  very  edge  o'  the  world, 
And  almost  put  a  price  upon  my  head  ? 

Sigifred.  Remember  how  he  spared  the  rebel  lords. 

Ludolph.  Yes,  yes,  I  know  he  hath  a  noble  nature 
That  cannot  trample  on  the  fallen.     But  his 
Is  not  the  only  proud  heart  in  his  realm. 
He  hath  wrong'd  me,  and  I  have  done  him  wrong  ; 
He  hath  loved  me,  and  I  have  shown  him  kindness  ; 
We  should  be  almost  equal. 

Sigifred.  Yet  for  all  this, 

I  would  you  had  appear'd  among  those  lords, 
And  ta'en  his  favor. 

Ludolph.  Ha  !  till  now  I  thought 

My  friend  had  held  poor  Ludolph's  honor  dear. 
What  !  would  you  have  me  sue  before  his  throne 
And  kiss  the  courtier's  missal,  its  silk  steps  ? 
Or  hug  the  golden  housings  of  his  steed. 
Amid  a  camp,  whose  steeled  swarms  I  dared 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  273 


But  yesterdny  ?     And,  at  the  trumpet  sound, 
Bow  like  some  unknown  mercenary's  flag 
And  lick  the  soiled  grass  ?     No,  no,  my  friend, 
I  would  not,  I,  be  pardon'd  in  the  heap. 
And  bless  indemnity  with  all  that  scum, — 
Those  men  I  mean,  who  on  my  shoulders  propp'd 
Their  weak  rebellion,  winning  me  with  lies, 
And  pitying  forsooth  my  many  wrongs  ; 
Poor  self-deceived  wretches,  who  must  think 
Each  one  himself  a  king  in  embryo. 
Because  some  dozen  vassals  cried — my  lord  ! 
Cowards,  who  never  knew  their  little  hearts, 
Till  flurried  danger  held  the  mirror  up. 
And  then  they  own'd  themselves  without  a  blush, 

Curling,  like  spaniels,  round  my  father's  feet. 

Such  things  deserted  me  and  are  forgiven, 

While  I,  less  guilty,  am  an  outcast  still. 

And  will  be,  for  I  love  such  fair  disgrace. 

Sigifred.  I  know  the  clear  truth  ;  so  would  Otho  see, 

For  he  is  just  and  noble.     Fain  would  I 

Be  pleader  for  you — 

Ludolph.  He'll  hear  none  of  it ; 

You  know  his  temper,  hot,  proud,  obstinate  ; 

Endanger  not  yourself  so  uselessly. 

I  will  encounter  his  thwart  spleen  myself. 

To-day,  at  the  Duke  Conrad's,  where  he  keeps 

His  crowded  state  after  the  victory, 

There  will  I  be,  a  most  unwelcome  guest, 

And  parley  with  him,  as  a  son  should  do. 

Who  doubly  loathes  a  father's  tyranny  ; 

Tell  him  how  feeble  is  that  tyranny ; 

How  the  relationship  of  father  and  son 

Is  no  more  valid  than  a  silken  leash 

Where  lions  tug  adverse,  if  love  grow  not 

From  interchanged  love  through  many  years. 

Ay,  and  those  turreted  Franconian  walls, 

Like  to  a  jealous  casket,  hold  my  pearl — 

My  fair  Auranthe  !     Yes,  I  will  be  there. 


274  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Sigifred.  Be  not  so  rash ;  wait  till  his  wrath  shall  pass, 
Until  his  royal  spirit  softly  ebbs 
Self-influenced  ;  then,  in  his  morning  dreams 
He  will  forgive  thee,  and  awake  in  grief 
To  have  not  thy  good  morrow. 

Ludolph.  Yes,  to-day 

I  must  be  there,  while  her  young  pulses  beat 
Among  the  new-plumed  minions  of  the  war. 
Have  you  seen  her  of  late  ?     No  ?     Auranthe, 
Franconia's  fair  sister,  'tis  I  mean. 
She  should  be  paler  for  my  troublous  days — 
And  there  it  is — my  father's  iron  lips 
Have  sworn  divorcement  'twixt  me  and  my  right. 

Sigifred  {aside).  Auranthe  !    I  had  hoped  this  whim  had 
pass'd. 

Ludolph.  And,  Sigifred,  with  all  his  love  of  justice, 
When  will  he  take  that  grandchild  in  his  arms. 
That,  by  my  love  I  swear,  shall  soon  be  his  ? 
This  reconcilement  is  impossible. 
For  see — but  who  ai*e  these  ? 

Sigifred.  They  are  messengers 

From  our  great  emperor ;  to  you,  I  doubt  not. 
For  couriers  are  abroad  to  seek  you  out. 

Enter  Theodore  and  Gonfked. 

Theodore.  Seeing  so  many  vigilant  eyes  explore 
The  province  to  invite  your  highness  back 
To  your  high  dignities,  we  are  too  happy. 

Gonfred.  We  have  eloquence  to  color  justly 
The  emperor's  anxious  wishes. 

Ludolph.  Go.     I  follow  you. 

[Exeunt  Theodore  and  Gonfred. 
I  play  the  prude  :  it  is  but  venturing — 
Why  should  he  be  so  earnest  ?     Come,  my  friend, 
Let  us  to  Friedburg  castle. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  275 


ACT     II. 

Scene  I. — A71  antechamber  in  the  Castle. 

Enter  Ludolph  ajid  Sigifred. 

Ludolph.  No  more  advices,  no  more  cautioning  ; 
I  leave  it  all  to  fate — to  any  thing ! 
I  cannot  square  my  conduct  to  time,  place, 
Or  circumstance  ;  to  me  'tis  all  a  mist ! 

Sigifred.  I  say  no  more. 

Ludolph.  It  seems  I  am  to  wait 

Here  in  the  anteroom ; — that  may  be  a  trifle. 
You  see  now  how  I  dance  attendance  here. 
Without  that  tyrant  temper,  you  so  blame, 
Snapping  the  rein.     You  have  medicin'd  me 
With  good  advices  ;   and  I  here  remain. 
In  this  most  honorable  anteroom, 
Your  patient  scliolar. 

Sigifred.  Do  not  wrong  me,  Prince. 

By  Heavens,  I'd  rather  kiss  Duke  Conrad's  slipper. 
When  in  the  morning  he  doth  yawn  with  pride, 
Than  see  you  humbled  but  a  half-degree  ! 
Truth  is,  the  Emperor  would  fain  dismiss 
The  Nobles  ere  he  sees  you. 

Enter  GoyTREvfrom  the  Council-room. 

Jjudolph.  Well,  sir!  what! 

Gonfred.  Great  honor  to  the  Prince  !     The  Emperor, 
Hearing  that  his  brave  son  had  reappeared, 
Instant  dismiss'd  the  Council  from  his  sight. 
As  Jove  fans  off  the  clouds.     Even  now  they  pass. 

{Exit. 

[Enter  the  Nobles  from  the  Council-room.  They  cross  the  Stage, 
bowing  with  respect  to  Ludolph,  he  frowning  on  them.  Conrad 
follows.     Exeunt  Nobles. 


276  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Ludolph.  Not  the  discolored  poisons  of  a  fen, 
Which  he,  who  breathes,  feels  warning  of  his  death, 
Could  taste  so  nauseous  to  the  bodily  sense, 
As  these  prodigious  sycophants  disgust 
The  soul's  fine  palate. 

Conrad.  Princely  Ludolph,  hail  ! 

Welcome,  thou  younger  sceptre  to  the  realm  ! 
Strength  to  thy  virgin  crownet's  golden  buds, 
That  they,  against  the  winter  of  thy  sire, 
May  burst,  and  swell,  and  flourish  round  thy  brows, 
Maturing  to  a  weighty  diadem  ! 
Yet  be  that  hour  far  off";  and  may  he  live. 
Who  waits  for  thee,  as  the  chapp'd  earth  for  rain. 
Set  my  life's  star  !  I  have  lived  long  enough, 
Since  under  my  glad  roof,  propitiously, 
Father  and  son  each  other  re-possess. 

Ludolph.  Fine  wording,  Duke  !  but  words  could  never  yet 
Forestall  the  flxtes  ;  have  you  not  learnt  that  yet  ? 
Let  me  look  well  :  your  features  are  the  same  ; 
Your  gait  the  same  ;  j'^our  hair  of  the  same  shade  ; 
As  one  I  knew  some  passed  weeks  ago. 
Who  sung  far  different  notes  into  mine  ears. 
I  have  mine  own  particular  comments  on't ; 
You  have  your  own  perhaps. 

Conrad.  My  gracious  Prince, 

All  men  may  err.     In  truth  1  was  deceived 
In  your  great  father's  nature,  as  you  were. 
Had  I  known  that  of  him  I  have  since  known. 
And  what  you  soon  will  learn,  I  would  have  turn'd 
My  sword  to  my  own  throat,  rather  than  held 
Its  threatening  edge  against  a  good  King's  quiet : 
Or  with  one  word  fever'd  )-ou,  gentle  Prince, 
Who  seem'd  lo  me,  as  rugged  times  then  went, 
Indeed  too  much  oppress'd.     May  I  be  bold 
To  tell  the  Emperor  you  will  haste  to  him  ? 

Ludolph.  Your  Dukedom's  privilege  will  grant  so  much. 

[Exit  Conrad. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  277 


He's  very  close  to  Otlio,  a  tight  leech  ! 
Your  hand — I  go  !     Ha  !  here  the  thunder  comes 
Sullen  against  the  wind  !     If  in  two  angry  brows 
My  safely  lies,  then  Sigifred,  I'm  safe. 
Enter  Otho  and  Conrad. 
Otho.  Will  you  make  Titan  play  the  lackey-page 
To  chattering  pigmies  ?     I  would  have  you  know 
That  such  neglect  of  our  high  Majesty 
Annuls  all  feel  of  kindred.     What  is  son, — 
Or  friend — or  brother — or  all  ties  of  blood, — 
When  the  whole  kingdom,  centred  in  ourself, 
Is  rudely  slighted  ?     Who  am  I  to  wait  ? 
By  Peter's  chair  !  I  have  upon  my  tongue 
A  word  to  fright  the  proudest  spirit  here  ! — 
Death  ! — and  slow  tortures  to  the  hardy  fool, 
Who  dares  take  such  large  charter  from  our  smiles  ! 
Conrad,  we  would  be  private  !     Sigifred  ! 
Off!     And  none  pass  this  way  on  pain  of  death  ! 

lExeimt  Conrad  a7id  Sigifred. 
Ludolph.  This  was  but  half  expected,  my  good  sire, 
Yet  I  am  grieved  at  it,  to  the  full  height, 
As  though  my  hopes  of  favor  had  been  whole. 

Otho.  How  you  indulge  yourself !  What  can  you  hope  for  ? 
Ludolph.  Nothing,  my  liege,  I  have  to  hope  for  nothing. 
I  come  to  greet  you  as  a  loving  son, 
And  then  depart,  if  I  may  be  so  free, 
Seeing  that  blood  of  yours  in  my  warm  veins 
Has  not  yet  mitigated  into  milk. 
Otho.  What  would  you,  sir  ? 

Ludolph.  A  lenient  banishment ; 

So  please  you  let  me  unmolested  pass 
This  Conrad's  gates,  to  the  wide  air  again. 
I  want  no  more.     A  rebel  wants  no  more. 

Otho.  And  shall  I  let  a  rebel  loose  again 
To  muster  kites  and  eagles  'gainst  my  head  ? 
No,  obstinate  boy,  you  shall  be  caged  up, 
Served  with  harsh  food,  with  scum  for  Sunday-drink. 
Ludolph.  Indeed  ! 

13 


278  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Olho.  And  chains  too  heavy  for  your  life  : 

I'll  choose  a  jailer,  whose  swart  monstrous  face 
Shall  be  a  hell  to  look  upon,  and  she — 

Ludolph.  Ha  ! 

Otho.  Shall  be  your  fair  Auranthe. 

Ludolph.  Amaze  !  Amaze  ! 

Otho.  To-day  you  marry  her. 

Ludolph.  This  is  a  sharp  jest ! 

Otho.  No.     None  at  all.     When  have  I  said  a  lie  ? 

Ludolph.  If  I  sleep  not,  I  am  a  waking  wretch. 

Otho.  Not  a  word  more.     Let  me  embrace  my  child. 

Ludolph.  I  dare  not.     'Twould  pollute  so  good  a  father  ! 
O  heavy  crime  !  that  your  son's  blinded  eyes 
Could  not  see  all  his  parent's  love  aright, 
As  now  I  see  it.     Be  not  kind  to  me — 
Punish  me  not  with  favor. 

Otho.  Are  you  sure, 

Ludolph,  you  have  no  saving  plea  in  store  ? 

Ludolph.  My  father,  none  ! 

Otho.  Then  you  astonish  me. 

Ludolph.  No,  I  have  no  plea.     Disobedince, 
Rebellion,  obstinacy,  blasphemy. 
Are  all  my  counselors.     If  they  can  make 
My  crooked  deeds  show  good  and  plausible, 
Then  grant  me  loving  pardon,  but  not  else, 
Good  Gods  !  not  else,  in  any  way,  my  liege  ! 

Otho.  You  are  a  most  perplexing,  noble  boy. 

Ludolph.  You  not  less  a  perplexing  noble  father. 

Otho.  Well,  you  shall  have  free  passport  through  the  gates. 
Farewell ! 

Ludolph.     Farewell !  and  by  these  tears  believe, 
And  still  remember,  I  repent  in  pain 
All  my  misdeeds  ! 

Otho.  Ludolph,  I  will !  I  will ! 

But,  Ludolph,  ere  you  go,  I  would  inquire 
If  you,  in  all  your  wandering,  ever  met 
A  certain  Arab  haunting  in  these  parts. 

Ludolph.  No,  my  good  lord,  I  cannot  say  I  did, 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  279 


Otho.  Make  not  your  fother  blind  before  his  time  ; 
Nor  let  these  arms  paternal  hunger  more 
For  an  embrace,  to  dull  the  appetite 
Of  my  great  love  for  thee,  my  supreme  child ! 
Come  close,  and  let  me  breathe  into  thine  ear. 
I  knew  you  through  disguise.     You  are  the  Arab ! 
You  can't  deny  it.  [E?nbracing  him. 

Ludolph.  Happiest  of  days  ! 

Otho.  We'll  make  it  so. 

Ludolph.  'Stead  of  one  fatted  calf 

Ten  hecatombs  shall  bellow  out  their  last. 
Smote  'twixt  the  horns  by  the  death-stunning  mace 
Of  Mars,  and  all  the  soldiery  shall  feast 
Nobly  as  Nimrod's  masons,  when  the  towers 
Of  Nineveh  new  kiss'd  the  parted  clouds  ! 

Otho.  Large  as  a  God  speak  out,  where  all  is  thine. 

Ludolph.  Ay,  father,  but  the  fire  in  my  sad  breast 
Is  quench'd  with  inward  tears  !     I  must  rejoice 
For  you,  whose  wings  so  shadow  over  me 
In  tender  victory,  but  for  myself 
I  still  must  mourn.     The  fair  Auranthe  mine  ! 
Too  great  a  boon  !     I  pr'ythee  let  me  ask 
What  more  than  I  know  of  could  so  have  changed 
Your  purpose  touching  her. 

Otho.  At  a  word,  this  : 

In  no  deed  did  you  give  me  more  offence 
Than  your  rejection  of  Erminia. 
To  my  appalling,  I  saw  too  good  proof 
Of  your  keen-eyed  suspicion, — she  is  naught ! 

Ludolph.  You  are  convinc'd  ? 

Otho.  Ay,  spite  of  her  sweet  looks. 

O,  that  my  brotlier's  daugjiler  should  so  fall ! 
Her  fame  has  pass'd  into  the  grosser  lips 
Of  soldiers  in  their  cups. 

Ludolph.  'Tis  very  sad. 

Otho.  No  more  of  her.     Auranthe — Ludolph,  come  ! 
This  marriage  be  the  bond  of  endless  peace  ! 

[Exeunt. 


280  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Scene  II. — The  entrance  o/'Gersa's  Tent  in  the  Hungarian  Camp. 
Enter  Erminia. 

Erminia.  Where !   where !   where  shall  I  find  a  messen- 
ger ? 
A  trusty  soul  ?     A  good  man  in  the  camp  ? 
Shall  I  go  myself?     Monstrous  wickedness  ! 
O  cursed  Conrad  !  devilish  Auranthe  ! 
Here  is  proof  palpable  as  the  bright  sun  ! 
O  for  a  voice  to  reach  the  Emperor's  ears ! 

[^Shouts  in  the  camp. 

Enter  an  Hungarian  Captain. 

Captain.  Fair  prisoner,  you  hear  those  joyous  shouts? 
The  king — aye,  now  our  king, — but  still  your  slave, 
Young  Gersa,  from  a  short  captivity 
Has  just  return'd.     He  bids  me  say,  bright  dame, 
That  even  the  homage  of  his  ranged  chiefs 
Cures  not  his  keen  impatience  to  behold 
Such  beauty  once  again.     What  ails  you,  lady? 

Erminia.  Say,  is  not  that  a  German,  yomler  ?     There  ! 

Captain.   Methinks  by  his  stout  bearing  he  should  be — 
Yes — it  is  Albert ;   a  brave  German  knight. 
And  much  in  the  Emperor's  flivor. 

Erminia.  I  would  fain 

Inquire  of  friends  and  kinsfolk  ;   how  they  fared 
In  these  rough  times.     Brave  soldier,  as  you  pass 
To  royal  Gersa  with  my  humble  tlianks, 
Will  you  send  yonder  knight  to  me  ? 

Captain.  I  will.  [Eodt. 

Erminia.  Yes,  he  was  ever  known  to  be  a  man 
Frank,  open,  generous  ;  Albert  I  may  trust. 
O  proof !  proof!  proof!     Albert's  an  honest  man  ;   • 
Not  Ethelbert  the  monk,  if  he  were  here, 
Would  I  hold  more  trustworthy.     Now  ! 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  281 


Enter  Albert. 

Alherl.  Good  Gods ! 

Lady  Erminia  !  are  you  prisoner 
In  this  beleaguer'd  camp  ?     Or  are  you  here 
Of  your  own  will  ?     You  pleased  to  send  for  me. 
By  Venus,  'tis  a  pity  I  knew  not 
Your  plight  before,  and,  by  her  Son,  I  swear 
To  do  you  every  service  you  can  ask. 
What  would  the  fairest — ? 

Erminia.  Albert,  will  you  swear  ? 

Albert.  I  have.     Well ! 

Erminia.  Albert,  you  have  fame  to  lose. 

If  men,  in  court  and  camp,  lie  not  outright, 
You  should  be,  from  a  thousand,  chosen  forth 
To  do  an  honest  deed.     Shall  I  confide —  ? 

Albert.  Aye,  any  thing  to  me,  fair  creature.     Do, 
Dictate  my  task.     Sweet  woman, — 

Erminia.  Truce  with  that. 

You  understand  me  not ;  and,  in  your  speech, 
I  see  how  far  the  slander  is  abroad. 
Without  proof  could  you  think  me  innocent  ? 

Albert.  Lady,  I  should  rejoice  to  know  you  so. 

Erminia.  If  you  have  any  pity  for  a  maid. 
Suffering  a  daily  death  from  evil  tongues ; 
Any  compassion  for  that  Emperor's  niece, 
Who,  for  your  bright  sword  and  clear  honesty, 
Lifted  you  from  the  crowd  of  common  men 
Into  the  lap  of  honor ; — save  me,  knight ! 

Albert.  How  ?     Make  it  clear  ;  if  it  be  possible, 
1  by  the  banner  of  Saint  Maurice  swear 
To  right  you. 

Erminia.  Possible  ! — Easy.     O  my  heart  ! 
This  letter's  not  so  soil'd  but  you  may  read  it  ; — 
Possible  !     There — that  letter  !     Read — read  it. 

[Gives  him  a  letter. 


282  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Albert  {reading). 

"  To  the  Duke  Conrad. — Forget  the  threat  you  made  at  part- 
ing, and  I  will  forget  to  send  the  Emperor  letters  and  papers  of 
yours  I  have  become  possessed  of.  His  life  is  no  trifle  to  me ; 
his  death  you  shall  find  none  to  yourself  (Speaks  to  himself.) 
'Tis  me — my  life  that's  plead  for  !  (Reads.)  "  He,  for  his  own 
sake,  will  be  dumb  as  the  grave.  Erminia  has  iny  shame  fix'd 
upon  her,  sure  as  a  wen.     We  are  safe. 

"  AURANTHE." 

A  she-devil !     A  dragon !     I  her  imp  ! 
Fire  of  Hell !     Auranthe — lewd  demon  ! 
Where  got  you  this  ?     Where  ?     When  ? 

Erminia.  I  found  it  in  the  tent,  among  some  spoils 
Which,  being  noble,  fell  to  Gersa's  lot. 
Come  in,  and  see. 

[  They  go  in  and  return. 

Albert.  Villany  !     Villany  ! 

Conrad's  sword,  his  corslet,  and  his  helm, 
And  his  letter.     Caitiff,  he  shall  feel — 

Erminia.  I  see  you  are  thunderstruck.  Haste,  haste  away  ! 

Albert.  O  I  am  tortured  by  this  villany. 

Erminia.  You  needs  must  be.     Carry  it  swift  to  Otho  ; 
Tell  him,  moreover,  I  am  prisoner 
Here  in  this  camp,  where  all  the  sisterhood. 
Forced  from  their  quiet  cells,  are  parcel'd  out 
For  slaves  among  these  Huns.     Away  !     Away  ! 

Albert.  I  am  gone. 

Erminia.  Swift  be  your  steed  !     Within  this  hour 
The  Emperor  will  see  it. 

Albert.  Ere  I  sleep  : 

That  I  can  swear.  \Hiirrics  out. 

Gersa  (without).  Brave  captains  !  thanks.     Enough 
Of  loyal  homage  now  ! 

Enter  Gersa. 

Erminia.  Hail,  royal  Hun  ! 

Gersa.  What  means  this,  fair  one  ?     Why  in  such  alarm  ? 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  283 


Who  was  it  hurried  by  me  so  distract  ? 

It  seem'd  you  were  in  deep  discourse  together  ; 

Your  doctrine  has  not  been  so  harsh  to  him 

As  to  my  poor  deserts.     Come,  come,  be  plain. 

I  am  no  jealous  fool  to  kill  you  both, 

Or,  for  such  trifles,  rob  th'  adorned  world 

Of  such  a  beauteous  vestal. 

Erminia.  I  grieve,  my  Lord, 

To  hear  you  condescend  to  ribald-phrase. 

Gersa.  This  is  too  much  !     Hearken,  my  lady  pure  ! 

Erminia.  Silence  !  and  hear  the  magic  of  a  name — 
Erminia  !     I  am  she, — the  Emperor's  niece  ! 
Praised  be  the  Heavens,  I  now  dare  own  myself! 

Gersa.  Erminia !     Indeed !     I've  heard  of  her. 
Pr'ythee,  fair  lady,  what  chance  brought  you  here  ? 

Erminia.  Ask  your  own  soldiers. 

Gersa.  And  you  dare  own  your  name. 

For  loveliness  you  may — and  for  the  rest 
My  vein  is  not  censorious. 

Erminia.  Alas  !  poor  me  ! 

'Tis  false  indeed. 

Gersa.  Indeed  you  are  too  fair  : 

The  swan,  soft  leaning  on  her  fledgy  breast, 
When  to  the  stream  she  launches,  looks  not  back 
With  such  a  tender  grace  ;  nor  are  her  wings 
So  white  as  your  soul  is,  if  that  but  be 
Twin  picture  to  your  face,     Erminia ! 
To-day,  for  the  first  day,  I  am  a  king. 
Yet  would  I  give  my  unworn  crown  away 
To  know  you  spotless. 

Erminia.  Trust  me  one  day  more, 

Generously,  without  more  certain  guarantee. 
Than  this  poor  face  you  deign  to  praise  so  much  ; 
After  that,  say  and  do  whate'er  you  please. 
If  I  have  any  knowledge  of  you,  sir, 
I  think,  nay  I  am  sure  you  will  grieve  much 
To  hear  my  story.     O  be  gentle  to  me, 


234  [LITERARY  REMAINS. 

For  I  am  sick  and  faint  with  many  wrongs, 
Tired  out,  and  weary-worn  with  contumelies. 
Gersa.  Poor  lady  ! 

Enter  Ethelbert. 

Erminia.  Gentle  Prince,  'tis  false  indeed. 

Good  morrow,  holy  father  !     I  have  had 
Your  prayers,  though  I  look'd  for  you  in  vain. 

Ethelbert.  Blessings  upon  you,  daughter  !     Sure  you  look 
Too  cheerful  for  these  foul  pernicious  days. 
Young  man,  you  heard  this  virgin  say  'twas  false, — 
'Tis  false  I  say.     What !  can  you  not  employ 
Your  temper  elsewhere,  'mong  these  burly  tents. 
But  you  must  taunt  this  dove,  for  she  hath  lost 
The  Eagle  Otho  to  beat  off  assault. 
Fie  !    Fie  !     But  I  will  be  her  guard  myself ; 
I'  the  Emperor's  name.     I  here  demand 
Herself,  and  all  her  sisterhood.     She  false  ! 

Gersa.  Peace  !  peace,  old  man  !     I  cannot  think  she  is. 

Ethelbert.   Whom  I  have  known  from  her  first  infancy, 
Baptized  her  in  the  bosom  of  the  Church, 
Watch'd  her,  as  anxious  husbandmen  the  grain, 
From  the  first  shoot  till  the  unripe  mid-May, 
Then  to  the  tender  ear  of  her  June  days. 
Which,  lifting  sweet  abroad  its  timid  green, 
Is  blighted  by  the  touch  of  calumny  ; 
You  cannot  credit  such  a  monstrous  tale. 

Gersa.  I  cannot.     Take  her.     Fair  Erminia, 
I  follow  you  to  Friedburg, — is  't  not  so  ? 

Erminia.  Ay,  so  we  purpose. 

Ethelbert.  Daughter,  do  you  so  ? 

How's  this  1     I  marvel  !     Yet  you  look  not  mad. 

Erminia.  I  have  good  news  to  tell  you,  Ethelbert. 

Gersa.  Ho  !  ho,  there.!    Guards  ! 
Your  blessing,  father  !     Sweet  Erminia, 
Believe  me,  I  am  well  nigh  sure — 

Erminia.  Farewell ! 

Short  time  will  show.  [Enter  Chiefs. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  285 


Yes,  father  Ethelbert, 
I  have  news  precious  as  we  pass  along. 

Ethelbert.  Dear  daughter,  you  shall  guide  me. 
Erminia.  To  no  ill. 

Gersa.  Command  an  escort  to  the  Friedburg  lines. 

\^Exeunt  Chiefs. 
Pray  let  me  lead.     Fair  lady,  forget  not 
Gersa,  how  he  believed  you  innocent. 
I  follow  you  to  Friedburg  with  all  speed. 


[Exeunt. 


ACT   III. 

Scene  I. —  The  Country. 

Enter  Albert. 

Albert.  O  that  the  earth  were  empty,  as  when  Cain 
Had  no  perplexity  to  hide  his  head  ! 
Or  that  the  sword  of  some  brave  enemy 
Had  put  a  sudden  stop  to  my  hot  breath, 
And  hurl'd  me  down  the  illimitable  gulf 
Of  times  past,  unremember'd !     Better  so 
Than  thus  fast-limed  in  a  cursed  snare. 
The  white  limbs  of  a  wanton.     This  tlie  end 
Of  an  aspiring  life  !    My  boyhood  past 
In  feud  with  wolves  and  bears,  when  no  eye  saw 
The  solitary  warfare,  fought  for  love 
Of  honor  'mid  the  growling  wilderness. 
My  sturdier  youth,  maturing  to  the  sword, 
Won  by  the  syren-trumpets,  and  the  ring 
Of  shields  upon  the  pavement,  when  bright  mail'd 
Henry  the  Fowler  pass'd  the  streets  of  Prague. 
Was  't  to  this  end  I  louted  and  became 
The  menial  of  Mars,  and  held  a  spear 
Sway'd  by  command,  as  corn  is  by  the  wind  ? 
13* 


286  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Is  it  for  this,  I  now  am  lifed  up 

By  Europe's  throned  Emperor,  to  see 

My  honor  be  my  executioner, — 

My  love  of  fame,  my  prided  honesty 

Put  to  the  torture  for  confessional  ? 

Then  the  damn'd  crime  of  blurting  to  the  world 

A  woman's  secret ! — Though  a  fiend  she  be. 

Too  tender  of  my  ignominious  life  ; 

But  then  to  wrong  the  generous  Emperor 

In  such  a  searching  point,  were  to  give  up 

My  soul  for  foot-ball  at  Hell's  holiday  ! 

I  must  confess, — and  cut  my  throat, — to-day  ? 

To-morrow  ?     Ho  !  some  wine  ! 

Enter  Sigifred. 

Sigifred.  A  fine  humor — 

Albert.  Who  goes  there  ?    Count  Sigifred  ?     Ha  !  ha  ! 

Sigifred.     What,  man,  do  you  mistake  the  hollow  sky 
For  a  throng'd  tavern, — and  these  stubbed  trees 
For  old  serge  hangings, — me,  your  humble  friend, 
For  a  poor  waiter  ?     Why,  man,  how  you  stare  ! 
What  gipsies  have  you  been  carousing  with  ? 
No,  no  more  wine  ;   methinks  you  've  had  enough. 

Albert.    You  well  may  laugh  and  banter.     What  a  fool 
An  injury  may  make  of  a  staid  man ! 
You  shall  know  all  anon, 

Sigifred.  Some  tavern  brawl  ? 

Albert.    'Twas  with  some  people  out  of  common  reach  ; 
Revenge  is  difticult. 

Sigifred.  I  am  your  friend  ; 

We  meet  again  to-day,  and  can  confer 
Upon  it.     For  the  present  I  'm  in  haste. 

Albert.    Whither  ? 

Sigifred.  To  fetch  King  Gersa  to  the  feast. 

The  Emperor  on  this  marriage  is  so  hot. 
Pray  Heaven  it  end  not  in  apoplexy  ! 
The  very  porters,  as  I  pass'd  the  doors, 
Heard  his  loud  laugh,  and  answer'd  in  full  choir. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  287 


I  marvel,  Albert,  you  delay  so  long 

From  these  bright  revelries  ;  go,  show  yourself, 

You  may  be  made  a  duke. 

Albert.  Ay,  very  like  : 

Pray,  what  day  has  his  Highness  fix'd  upon  ? 

Sigifred.    For  what  ? 

Albert.  The  marriage.     What  else  can  I  mean  ? 

Sigifred.  To-day.     O,  I  forgot,  you  could  not  know  ; 
The  news  is  scarce  a  minute  old  with  me. 

Albert.   Married  to-day  !     To-day  !     You  did  not  say  so  ? 

Sigifred.  Now,  while  I  speak  to  you,  their  comely  heads 
Are  bowed  before  the  mitre. 

Albert.  O  !  monstrous ! 

Sigifred.  What  is  this  ? 

Albert.  Nothing,  Sigifred.     Farewell ! 

We'll  meet  upon  our  subject.     Farewell,  count ! 

{Exii. 

Sigifred.  To  this  clear-headed  Albert  ?     He  brain-turn'd ! 
'Tis  as  portentous  as  a  meteor. 

[^Exit. 


Scene  II. — An  Apartment  in  the  Casth. 

[Enter    as  from   the  Marriage,   Otho,  Ludolph,  Auranthe,  Conrad, 
Nobles,  Knights,  Ladies,  i^c.  ifc.  ifc.    Music. 

Otho.  Now,  Ludolph  !  Now,  Auranthe  !  Daughter  fair ! 
What  can  I  find  to  grace  your  nuptial  day 
More  than  my  love,  and  these  wide  realms  in  fee  ? 

Ludolph.  I  have  too  much. 

Auranthe.  And  I,  my  liege,  by  far. 

Ludolph.  Auranthe  !  I  have !  O,  my  bi-ide,  my  love ! 
Not  all  the  gaze  upon  us  can  restrain 
My  eyes,  too  long  poor  exiles  from  thy  face, 
From  adoration,  and  my  foolish  tongue 
From  uttering  soft  responses  to  the  love 
I  see  in  thy  mute  beauty  beaming  forth  ! 
Fair  creature,  bless  me  with  a  single  word  ! 
All  mine ! 


288  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Auranihe.  Spare,  spare  me,  my  Lord  ;  I  swoon  else. 

Ludolph.  Soft  beauty  !  by  to-morrow  I  should  die, 
Wert  thou  not  mine. 

[They  talk  apart. 

1st  Lady.  How  deep  she  has  bewitch'd  him ! 

1st  Knight.  Ask  you  for  her  recipe  for  love  philtres. 

2nd  Lady.  They  hold  the  Emperor  in  admiration. 

Otho.  If  ever  king  was  happy,  that  am  I ! 
What  are  the  cities  'yond  the  Alps  to  me, 
The  provinces  about  the  Danube's  mouth, 
The  promise  of  fair  sail  beyond  the  Rhone  ; 
Or  routing  out  of  Hyperborean  hordes, 
To  these  fair  children,  stars  of  a  new  age  ? 
Unless  perchance  I  might  rejoice  to  win 
This  little  ball  of  earth,  and  chuck  it  them 
To  play  with  ! 

Auranthe.  Nay,  my  Lord,  I  do  not  know. 

Ludolph.  Let  me  not  famish. 

Otho  {to  Conrad).  Good  Franconia, 

You  heard  what  oath  I  sware,  as  the  sun  rose, 
That  unless  Heaven  would  send  me  back  my  son, 
My  Arab, — no  soft  music  should  enrich 
The  cool  Mane,  kissM  off  with  a  soldier's  smack  ; 
Now  all  my  empire,  barter'd  for  one  feast. 
Seems  poverty. 

Conrad,  Upon  the  neighbor-plain 

The  heralds  have  prepared  a  royal  lists ; 
Your  knights,  found  war-proof  in  the  bloody  field. 
Speed  to  the  game. 

Otho.  Well,  Ludolph,  what  say  you  ? 

Ludolph.  My  lord  ! 

Otho.  A  tourney  ? 

Conrad.  Or,  if't  please  you  best — 

Ludolph.  I  want  no  more  ! 

\st  Lady.  He  soars  ! 

2nd  Lady.  Past  all  reason, 

Ludolph.  Though  heaven's  choir 
Should  in  a  vast  circumference  descend, 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  289 


And  sing  for  my  delight,  I'd  stop  my  ears ! 
Though  bright  Apollo's  car  stood  bui'ning  here, 
And  he  put  out  an  arm  to  bid  me  mount, 
His  touch  an  immortality,  not  I  ! 
This  earth,  this  palace,  this  room,  Auranthe ! 

Otho.  This  is  a  little  painful ;  just  too  much. 
Conrad,  if  he  flames  longer  in  this  wise, 
I  shall  believe  in  wizard-woven  loves 
And  old  romances  ;   but  I'll  break  the  spell. 
Ludolph  ! 

Conrad.  He'll  be  calm,    anon. 

Ludolph.  You  call'd  ! 

Yes,  yes,  yes,  I  offend.     You  must  forgive  me : 
Not  being  quite  recover'd  from  the  stun 
Of  your  large  bounties.     A  tourney,  is  it  not? 

[-4  senet  heard  faintly . 

Conrad.  The  trumpets  reach  us. 

Ethelbert  (toithout).  On  your  peril,  sirs, 

Detain  us  ! 

1st  Voice  (without).  Let  not  the  abbot  pass. 

2nd  Voice  {without).  No, 

On  your  lives ! 

\st  Voice  (without).  Holy  father,  you  must  not. 

Ethelbert  (mthout).  Otho  ! 

Otho.  Who  calls  on  Otho  ? 

EtJieJhert  (without).  Ethelbert ! 

Otho.  Let  him  come  in. 

[Enter  Ethelbert  leading  in  Erminia. 
Thou  cursed  abbot,  why 
Hast  brought  pollution  to  our  holy  jites? 
Hast  thou  no  fear  of  hangman,  or  the  faggot  ? 

Ludolph.  What  portent — what  strange  prodigy  is  this  ? 

Conrad.  Away  ! 

Ethelbert.  You,  Duke  ? 

Erminia.  Albert  has  surely  fail'd  me  ! 

Look  at  the  Emperor's  brow  upon  me  bent ! 

Ethelbert.  A  sad  delay  ! 

Conrad.  Away,  thou  guilty  thing  ! 


290  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Ethelbert.  You  again,  Duke  ?     Justice,  most  noble  Otho  ! 
You — go  to  your  sister  there  and  plot  again, 
A  quick  plot,  swift  as  thought  to  save  your  heads ; 
For  lo  !  the  toils  are  spread  around  your  den, 
The  world  is  all  agape  to  see  dragg'd  forth 
Two  ugly  monsters. 

Ludolph.  What  means  he,  my  lord  ? 

Conrad.  I  cannot  guess. 

Ethelbert.  Best  ask  your  lady  sister, 

Whether  the  riddle  puzzles  her  beyond 
The  power  of  utterance. 

Conrad.  Foul  barbarian,  cease  ; 

The  Princess  faints ! 

Ludolph.  Stab  him  !     O,  sweetest  wife  ! 

[Attenda7its  bear  off  Auranthe. 

Erminia.  Alas  ! 

Ethelbert.  Your  wife ! 

Ludolph.  Ay,  Satan  !  does  that  yerk  ye  ? 

Ethelbert.  Wife  !  so  soon  ! 

Ludolph.  Ay,  wife  !     Oh,  impudence  ! 

Thou  bitter  mischief!     Venomous  bad  priest ! 
How  dar'stthou  lift  those  beetle  brows  at  me  ? 
Me — the  prince  Ludolph,  in  this  presence  here. 
Upon  my  marriage  day,  and  scandalize 
My  joys  with  such  opprobrious  surprise  ? 
Wife  !     Why  dost  linger  on  that  syllable. 
As  if  it  were  some  demon's  name  pronounc'd 
To  summon  harmful  lightning,  and  make  yawn 
The  sleepy  thunder  ?     Hast  no  sense  of  fear  ? 
No  ounce  of  man  in  thy  mortality  ? 
Tremble !  for,  at  my  nod,  the  sharpen'd  axe 
Will  make  thy  bold  tongue  quiver  to  the  roots. 
Those  gray  lids  wink,  and  thou  not  know  it,  monk  ! 

Ethelbert.  O,  poor  deceived  Prince  !  I  pity  thee  ! 
Great  Otho  !  I  claim  justice — 

Ludolph.  Thou  shalt  have  't ! 

Thine  arms  from  forth  a  pulpit  of  hot  fire 
Shall  sprawl  distracted  !     O  that  that  dull  cowl 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  291 


Were  some  most  sensitive  portion  of  thy  life, 
That  I  might  give  it  to  my  hounds  to  tear ! 
Thy  girdle  some  fine  zealous-pained  nerve 
To  girth  my  saddle  !     And  those  devil's  beads 
Each  one  a  life,  that  I  might,  every  day. 
Crush  one  with  Vulcan's  hammer  ! 

Otho.  Peace,  my  son  ; 

You  far  outstrip  my  spleen  in  this  affair. 
Let  us   be  calm,  and  hear  the  abbot's  plea 
For  this  intrusion. 

Ludolph.  I  am  silent,  sire. 

Olho.  Conrad,  see  all  depart  not  wanted  here. 

[^Exeunt,  Knights,  Ladies,  <^c. 
Ludolph,  be  calm.     Ethelbert,  peace  awhile. 
This  mystery  demands  an  audience 
Of  a  just  judge,  and  that  will  Otho  be. ' 

Ludolph.  Why  has  he  time  to  breathe  another  word  ? 

Otho.  Ludolph,  old  Ethelbert,  be  sure,  comes  not 
To  beard  us  for  no  cause  ;  he's  not  the  man 
To  cry  himself  up  an  ambassador 
Without  credentials. 

Ludolph.  I'll  chain  up  myself. 

Otho.  Old  abbot,  stand  here  forth.     Lady  Erminia, 
Sit.     And  now,  abbot !  what  have  you  to  say  ? 
Our  ear  is  open.     First  we  here  denounce 
Hard  penalties  against  thee,  if 't  be  found 
The  cause  for  which  you  have  disturb'd  us  here, 
Making  our  bright  hours  muddy,  be  a  thing 
Of  little  moment. 

Ethelbert.  See  this  innocent ! 

Otho  !  thou  father  of  the  people  call'd. 
Is  her  life  nothing  ?     Her  fair  honor  nothing  ? 
Her  tears  from  matins  until  even-song 
Nothing  ?     Her  burst  heart  nothing  ?     Emperor ! 
Is  this  your  gentle  niece — the  simplest  flower 
Of  the  world's  herbal — this  fair  lily  blanch'd 
Still  with  the  dews  of  piety,  this  meek  lady 
Here  sitting  like  an  angel  newly-shent, 


292  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Who  veils  its  snowy  wings  and  grows  all  pale, — 
Is  she  nothing  ? 

Olho.  What  naore  to  the  purpose,  abbot  1 

Ludolph.  Whither  is  he  winding  ? 

Conrad.  No  clue  yet ! 

Eihelbert.  You   have  heard,  my  Liege,  and  so,  no  doubt, 
all  here, 
Foul,  poisonous,  malignant  whisperings ; 
Nay  open  speech,  rude  mockery  grown  common, 
Against  the  spotless  nature  and  clear  fame 
Of  the  princess  Erminia,  your  niece. 
1  have  intruded  here  thus  suddenly, 
Because  T  hold  those  base  weeds,  with  tight  hand, 
Which  now  disfigure  her  fair  growing  stem, 
Waiting  but  for  your  sign  to  pull  them  up 
By  the  dark  roots,  and  leave  her  palpable. 
To  all  men's  sight,  a  lady  innocent. 
The  ignominy  of  that  whisper'd  tale 
About  a  midnight  gallant,  seen  to  climb 
A  window  to  her  chamber  neighbor'd  near, 
I  will  from  her  turn  off,  and  put  the  load 
On  the  right  shoulders;  on  that  wretch's  head, 
Who,  by  close  stratagems,  did  save  herself. 
Chiefly  by  shifting  to  this  lady's  room 
A  rope-ladder  for  false  witness. 

Ludolph.  Most  atrocious ! 

Otho.  Ethelbert,  proceed. 

Ethelhert.  With  sad  lips  I  shall : 

For,  in  the  healing  of  one  wound,  1  fear 
To  make  a  greater.     His  young  highness  here 
To-day  was  married. 

Ludolph.  Good. 

Ethelbert.  Would  it  were  good  ! 

Yet  why  do  I  delay  to  spread  abroad 
The  names  of  those  two  vipers,  from  whose  jaw 
A  deadly  breath  went  forth  to  taint  and  blast 
This  guileless  lady  ? 

Otho.  Abbot,  speak  their  names. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  293 


Ethelbert.  A  minute  first.     It  cannot  be — but  may 
I  ask,  great  judge,  if  you  to-day  have  put 
A  letter  by  unread  ? 

Otho.  Does  't  end  in  this  ? 

Conrad.  Out  with  their  names  ! 

Ethelbert.  Bold  siimer,  say  you  so  ? 

Ludoljjh.  Out,  hideous  monk  ! 

OlJio.  Confess,  or  by  the  wheel — 

Ethelbert.  My  evidence  cannot  be  far  away  ; 
And,  though  it  never  come,  be  on  my  head 
The  crime  of  passing  an  attaint  upon 
The  slanderers  of  this  virgin. 

Ludolph.  Speak  aloud  ! 

Ethelbert.  Auranthe  !  and  her  brother  there. 

Conrad.      Amaze ! 

Ludolph,  Throw  them  from  the  windows  ! 

Otho.  Do  what  you  will ! 

Ludolph.  What  shall  I  do  with  them  ? 

Something  of  quick  dispatch,  for  should  she  hear, 
My  soft  Auranthe,  her  sweet  mercy  would 
Prevail  against  m}"^  fury.     Damned  priest ! 
What  swift  death  wilt  thou  die  ?     As  to  the  lady, 
I  touch  her  not. 

Ethelbert.  Illustrious  Otho,  stay  ! 

An  ample  store  of  misery  thou  hast. 
Choke  not  the  granary  of  thy  noble  mind 
With  more  bad  bitter  grain,  too  difficult 
A  cud  for  the  repentance  of  a  man 
Gray-grownig.     To  thee  only  I  appeal. 
Not  to  thy  noble  son,  whose  yeasting  youth 
Will  clear  itself,  and  crystal  turn  again. 
A  young  man's  heart,  by  Heaven's  blessing,  is 
A  wide  world,  where  a  thousand  new-born  hopes 
Empurple  fresh  the  melancholy  blood  : 
But  an  old  man's  is  narrow,  tenantless 
Of  hopes,  and  stufT'd  with  many  memories. 
Which,  being  pleasant,  ease  the  heavy  pulse — 
Painful,  clog  up  and  stagnate.     Weigh  this  matter 


294  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Even  as  a  miser  balances  his  coin  ; 

And,  in  the  name  of  mercy,  give  command 

That  your  knight  Albert  be  brought  here  before  you. 

He  will  expound  tliis  riddle ;  he  will  show 

A  noon-day  proof  of  bad  Auranthe's  guilt. 

Otlio.  Let  Albert  straight  be  summon'd. 

l^Exit  one  of  the  Nobles, 

Ludolph.  Impossible ! 

I  cannot  doubt — I  will  not — no — to  doubt 
Is  to  be  ashes  ! — wither'd  up  to  death  ! 

Otho.  My  gentle  Ludolph,  harbor  not  a  fear; 
You  do  yourself  much  wrong. 

Ludolph.  O,  wretched  dolt ! 

Now,  when  my  foot  is  almost  on  thy  neck. 
Wilt  thou  infuriate  me  ?     Proof!     Thou  fool ! 
Why  wilt  thou  tease  impossibility 
With  such  a  thick-skuU'd  persevering  suit  ? 
Fanatic  obstinacy  !     Prodigy  ! 
Monster  of  folly  !     Ghost  of  a  turn'd  brain  ! 
You  puzzle  me, — you  haunt  me, — when  I  dream 
Of  you  my  brain  will  split !     Bold  sorcerer  ! 
Juggler !     May  I  come  near  you  ?     On  my  soul 
I  know  not  whether  to  pity,  curse,  or  laugh. 

Enter  Albert,  and  the  NoMeman. 

Here,  Albert,  this  old  phantom  wants  a  proof! 
Give  him  his  proof!     A  camel's  load  of  proofs  ! 

Otho.  Albert,  I  speak  to  you  as  a  man 
Whose  words  once  utler'd  pass  like  current  gold; 
And  therefore  fit  to  calmly  put  a  close 
To  this  brief  tempest.     Do  you  stand  possess'd 
Of  any  proof  against  the  honorableness 
Of  Lady  Auranthe,  our  new-spoused  daughter? 

Albert.  You  chill  me  with  astonishment.     How's  this  ? 
My  liege,  what  proof  should  I  have  'gainst  a  fame 
Impossible  to  slur  ? 

[Otho  rises. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  295 

Erminia.  O  wickedness  ! 

Ellielhert.  Deluded  monarch,  'tis  a  cruel  lie. 

Otho.  Peace,  rebel-priest ! 

Conrad.  Insult  beyond  credence  ! 

Erminia.  Almost  a  dream  ! 

Ludolph.  We  have  awaked  from ! 

A  foolish  dream  that  from  my  brow  hath  wrung 
A  wrathful  dew.     O  folly  !  why  did  I 
So  act  the  lion  with  this  silly  gnat  ? 
Let  them  depart.     Lady  Erminia  ! 
I  ever  grieved  for  you,  as  who  did  not  ? 
But  now  you  have,  with  such  a  brazen  front, 
So  most  maliciously,  so  madly  striven 
To  dazzle  the  soft  moon,  when  tenderest  clouds 
Should  be  unloop'd  around  to  curtain  her ; 
I  leave  you  to  the  desert  of  the  world 
Almost  with  pleasure.     Let  them  be  set  free 
For  me  !     I  take  no  personal  revenge 
More  than  against  a  nightmare,  which  a  man 
Forgets  in  the  new  dawn. 

[Exit  LUDOLPH. 

Otho.  Still  in  extremes.     No,  they  must  not  be  loose. 

Ethelbert.     Albert,  I  must  suspect  thee  of  a  crime 
So  fiendish — 

Olho.         Fear'st  thou  not  my  fury,  monk  ? 
Conrad,  be  they  in  your  safe  custody 
Till  we  determine  some  fit  punishment. 
It  is  so  mad  a  deed,  I  must  reflect 
And  question  them  in  private  ;  for  perhaps, 
By  patient  scrutiny,  we  may  discover 
Whether  they  merit  death,  or  should  be  placed 
In  care  of  the  physicians. 

[Exeunt  Otho  and  Nobles,  Albert  following. 

Conrad.  My  guards,  ho  ! 

Erminia.  Albert,  wilt  thou  follow  there  ? 

Wilt  thou  creep  dastardly  behind  his  back. 
And  shrink  away  from  a  weak  woman's  eye  ? 


296  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Turn,  thou  court-Janus !  thou  forget'st  thyself; 
Here  is  the  duke,  waiting  with  open  arms, 

[Elder  Guards. 
To  thank  thee  ;  here  congratulate  each  other  ; 
Wring  hands  ;  embrace  ;   and  swear  how  lucky  'twas 
That  I,  by  happy  chance,  hit  the  right  man 
Of  all  the  world  to  trust  in. 

Albert.  Trust !  to  me  ! 

Conrad  [aside).  He  is  the  sole  one  in  this  mystery. 

Erminia.  Well,  I  give  up,  and  save  my  prayers  for 
Heaven ! 
You,  who  could  do  this  deed,  would  ne'er  relent, 
Though,  at  my  words,  the  hollow  prison-vaults 
Would  groan  for  pity. 

Conrad.  Manacle  them  both  ! 

Eihelbert.  I  know  it — it  must  be — I  see  it  all ! 
Albert,  thou  art  the  minion  ! 

Erminia.  Ah  !  too  plain — 

Conrad.  Silence  !  Gag  up  their  mouths  !  I  cannot  bear 
More  of  this  brawling.     That  the  Emperor 
Had  placed  you  in  some  other  custody ! 
Bring  them  away. 

[Exeunt  all  hut  Albert. 

Albert.  Though  my  name  perish  from  the  book  of  honor, 
Almost  before  the  recent  ink  is  dry. 
And  be  no  more  remember'd  after  death, 
Than  any  drummer's  in  the  muster-roll  ; 
Yet  shall  I  season  high  my  sudden  fall 
With  triumph  o'er  that  evil-witted  duke ! 
He  shall  feel  what  it  is  to  have  the  hand 
Of  a  man  drowning,  on  his  hateful  throat. 

Enter  Gersa  and  Sigifred. 

Gersa.  What  discord  is  at  ferment  in  this  house  ? 

Sigifred.  We  are  without  conjecture  ;  not  a  soul 
We  met  could  answer  any  certainty. 

Gersa.  Young  Ludolph,  like  a  fiery  arrow,  shot 
By  us. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  297 


Sigifred.  The  Emperor,  with  cross'd  arms,  in  thought. 

Gersa.  In  one  room  music,  in  another  sadness. 
Perplexity  every  where ! 

Albert.  A  trifle  more  ! 

Follow  ;  your  presences  will  much  avail 
To  tune  our  jarred  spirits.     I'll  explain. 

[Exeunt. 


ACT  IV. 

Scene  I. — Auranthe's  Apartment. 

AuRANTHE  and  Conrad  discovered. 

Conrad.  Well,  well,  I  know  what  ugly  jeopardy 
We  are  caged  in ;  you  need  not  pester  that 
Into  my  ears.     Pr'ythee,  let  me  be  spared 
A  foolish  tongue,  that  I  may  bethink  me 
Of  remedies  with  some  deliberation. 
You  cannot  doubt  but  'tis  in  Albert's  power 
To  crush  or  save  us  ? 

Auranthe.  No,  I  cannot  doubt. 

He  has,  assure  yourself,  by  some  strange  means, 
My  secret ;   which  I  ever  hid  from  him, 
Knowing  his  mawkish  honesty. 

Conrad.  pursed  slave  ! 

Auranthe.  Ay,  I  could  almost  curse  him  now  myself, 
Wretched  impediment !     Evil  genius  ! 
A  glue  upon  my  wings,  that  cannot  spread, 
When  they  should  span  the  provinces!     A  snake, 
A  scorpion,  sprawling  on  the  first  gold  step, 
Conducting  to  the  throne,  high  canopied. 

Conrad.  You  would  not  hear  my  counsel,  when  his  life 
Might  have  been  trodden  out,  all  sure  and  hush'd  ; 
Mow  the  dull  animal  forsooth  must  be 
Entreated,  managed  !     When  can  you  contrive 
The  interview  he  demands  ? 


298  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Auranlhe.  As  speedily 

It  must  be  done  as  my  bribed  woman  can 
Unseen  conduct  him  to  me ;  but  I  fear 
'Twill  be  impossible,  while  the  broad  day 
Comes  through  the  panes  with  persecuting  glare. 
Methinks,  if  't  now  were  night  I  could  intrigue 
With  darkness,  bring  the  stars  to  second  me. 
And  settle  all  this  trouble. 

Conrad.  Nonsense  !     Child  ! 

See  him  immediately  ;  why  not  now  ? 

Auranihe.    Do  you  forget  that  even  the  senseless  door-posts 
Are  on  the  watch  and  gape  through  all  the  house  j 
How  many  whisperers  there  are  about, 
Hungry  for  evidence  to  ruin  me  : 
Men  I  have  spurn'd,  and  women  I  have  taunted. 
Besides,  the  foolish  prince  sends,  minute  whiles, 
His  pages — so  they  tell  me — to  inquire 
After  my  health,  entreating,  if  I  please, 
To  see  me. 

Conrad.     Well,  suppose  this  Albert  here  ; 
What  is  your  power  with  him  ? 

Auranthe.  He  should  be 

My  echo,  my  taught  parrot !  but  I  fear 
He  will  be  cur  enough  to  bark  at  me ; 
Have  his  own  say ;   read  me  some  silly  creed 
'Bout  shame  and  pity. 

Conrad.  .What  will  you  do  then  ? 

Auranthe.     What  I  shall  do,  I  know  not ;  what  I  would 
Cannot  be  done ;  for  see,  this  chamber-floor 
Will  not  yield  to  the  pick-axe  and  the  spade, — 
Here  is  no  quiet  depth  of  hollow  ground. 

Conrad.     Sister,  you  have  grown  sensible  and  wise, 
Seconding,  ere  I  speak  it,  what  is  now, 
I  hope,  resolved  between  us. 

Auranthe.  Say,  what  is  't  ? 

Conrad.     You  need  not  be  his  sexton  too  ;  a  man 
May  carry  that  with  him  shall  make  him  die 
Elsewhere, — give  that  to  him  ;  pretend  the  while 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  299 


You  will  to-morrow  succumb  to  his  wishes, 
Be  what  they  may,  and  send  him  from  the  Castle 
On  some  fool's  errand  :  let  his  latest  groan 
Frighten  the  wolves ! 

Auranihe.  Alas !  he  must  not  die  ! 

Conrad.    Would  you  were  both  hearsed  up  in  stifling  lead  ! 
Detested — 

Auranthe.     Conrad,  hold  !  I  would  not  bear 
The  little  thunder  of  your  fretful  tongue, 
Tho'  I  alone  were  taken  in  these  toils, 
And  you  could  free  me ;  but  remember,  sir. 
You  live  alone  in  my  security  : 
So  keep  your  wits  at  work,  for  your  own  sake, 
Not  mine,  and  be  more  mannerly. 

Conrad.  Thou  wasp ! 

If  my  domains  were  emptied  of  these  folk, 
And  I  had  thee  to  starve — 

Auranihe.  O,  marvelous ! 

But  Conrad,  now  be  gone ;  the  Host  is  look'd  for ; 
Cringe  to  the  Emperor,  entertain  the  Lords, 
And,  do  ye  mind,  above  all  things,  proclaim 
My  sickness,  with  a  brother's  sadden'd  eye, 
Condoling  with  Prince  Ludolph.     In  fit  time 
Return  to  me. 

Conrad.     I  leave  you  to  your  thoughts. 

\^Exit. 

Auranthe  (sola).      Down,   down,   proud    temper !    down, 
Auranthe's  pride ! 
Why  do  I  anger  him  when  I  should  kneel  ? 
Conrad  !  Albert !  help  !  help !     What  can  I  do  ? 
O  wretched  woman  !  lost,  wreck'd,  swallow'd  up. 
Accursed,  blasted  !     O,  thou  golden  Crown, 
Orbing  along  the  serene  firmament 
Of  a  wide  empire,  like  a  glowing  moon ; 
And  thou,  bright  sceptre  !  lustrous  in  my  eyes, — 
There — as  the  fabled  fair  Hesperian  tree. 
Bearing  a  fruit  more  precious  !  graceful  thing. 
Delicate,  godlike,  magic  !  must  I  leave 


300  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Thee  to  melt  in  the  visionary  air, 
Ere,  by  one  grasp,  this  common  hand  is  made 
Imperial  ?     I  do  not  know  the  time 
When  I  have  wept  for  sorrow ;  but  methinks 
I  could  now  sit  upon  the  ground,  and  shed 
Tears,  tears  of  misery  !     O,  the  heavy  day  ! 
How  shall  I  bear  my  life  till  Albert  comes? 
Ludolph  !     Erminia  !     Proofs  !     O  heavy  day  ! 
Bring  me  some  mourning  weeds,  that  I  may  'tire 
Myself,  as  fits  one  wailing  her  own  death  : 
Cut  off  these  curls,  and  brand  this  lily  hand. 
And  throw  these  jewels  from  my  loathing  sight, — 
Fetch  me  a  missal,  and  a  string  of  beads, — 
A  cup  of  bitter'd  water,  and  a  crust, — 
I  will  confess,  O  holy  Abbot ! — How  ! 
What  is  this  ?     Auranthe  !  thou  fool,  dolt. 
Whimpering  idiot !  up  !  up  !  and  quell ! 
1  am  safe  !  Coward  !  why  am  I  in  fear  ? 
Albert !  he  cannot  stickle,  chew  the  cud 
In  such  a  fine  extreme, — impossible ! 

Who  knocks  ? 

[Goes  to  the  door,  listens,  and  opens  it. 

Enter  Albert. 

Albert,  I  have  been  waiting  for  you  here 
With  such  an  aching  heart,  such  swooning  throbs 
On  my  poor  brain,  such  cruel — cruel  sorrow, 
■  That  I  should  claim  your  pity !     Art  not  well  ? 

Albert.     Yes,  lady,  well. 

Auranthe.  You  look  not  so,  alas ! 

But  pale,  as  if  you  brought  some  heavy  news. 

Albert.     You  know  full  well  what  makes  me  look  so  pale. 

Auranthe.     No  !     Do  I  ?     Surely  I  am  still  to  learn 
Some  horror;   all  I  know,  this  present,  is 
I  am  near  hustled  to  a  dangerous  gulf, 
Which  you  can  save  me  from, — and  therefore  safcj 
So  trusting  in  thy  love  ;  that  should  not  make 
Thee  pale,  my  Albert. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  301 


Albert.  It  doth  make  me  freeze. 

Auranilie.   Why  should  it,  love  ? 
*    Albert.  You  should  not  ask  me  that, 

But  make  your  own  heart  monitor,  and  save 
Me  the  great  pain  of  telling.     You  must  know. 

Auranthe.    Something  has  vext  you,  Albert.     There  are 
times 
When  simplest  things  put  on  a  sombre  cast ; 
A  melancholy  mood  will  haunt  a  man, 
Until  most  easy  matters  take  the  shape 
Of  unachievable  tasks  ;  small  rivulets 
Then  seem  impassable. 

Albert.  Do  not  cheat  yourself 

With  hope  that  gloss  of  words,  or  suppliant  action, 
Or  tears,  or  ravings,  or  self-threaten'd  death, 
Can  alter  my  resolve. 

Auranthe.  You  make  me  tremble  ; 

Not  so  much  at  your  threats,  as  at  your  voice, 
Untuned,  and  harsh,  and  barren  of  all  love. 

Albert.  You  suffocate  me  !     Stop  this  devil's  parley, 
And  listen  to  me ;  know  me  once  for  all. 

Auranthe.  I  thought  I  did.     Alas  !  I  am  deceived. 

Albert.  No,  you  are  not  deceived.     You  took  me  for 
A  man  detesting  all  inhuman  crime ; 
And  therefore  kept  from  me  your  demon's  plot 
Against  Erminia.     Silent  1     Be  so  still  ; 
For  ever  !     Speak  no  more  ;  but  hear  my  words, 
Thy  fate.     Your  safety  I  have  bought  to-day 
By  blazoning  a  lie,  which  in  the  dawn 
I'll  expiate  with  truth. 

Auranthe.  O  cruel  traitor  ! 

Albert.  For  I  would  not  set  eyes  upon  thy  shame  ; 
I  would  not  see  thee  dragg'd  to  death  by  the  hair, 
Penanced,  and  taunted  on  a  scaffolding  ! 
To-night,  upon  the  skirts  of  the  blind  wood 
That  blackens  northward  of  these  horrid  towers, 
I  wait  for  you  with  horses.     Choose  your  fate. 
Farewell  ! 

14 


302  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Auranihe.  Albert,  you  jest;  I'm  sure  you  must. 
You,  an  ambitious  Soldier !     I,  a  Queen, 
One  who  could  say, — here,  rule  these  Provinces  !  • 

Take  tribute  from  those  cities  for  thyself ! 
Empty  these  armories,  these  treasuries, 
Muster  thy  warlike  thousands  at  a  nod  ! 
Go  !  Conquer  Italy  ! 

Albert.  Auranthe,  you  have  made 

The  whole  world  chaff  to  me.     You  doom  is  fix'd. 

Auranthe.  Out,  villain  !  dastard  ! 

Albert.  Look  there  to  the  door  ! 

Who  is  it  ? 

Auranthe.  Conrad,  traitor  ! 

Albert.  Let  him  in. 

Enter  Conrad. 

Do  not  affect  amazement,  hypocrite, 
At  seeing  me  in  this  chamber. 

Conrad.  Aurantlie  ? 

Albert.  Talk  not  with  eyes,  but  speak  your  curses  out 
Against  me,  who  would  sooner  crush  and  grind 
A  brace  of  toads,  than  league  with  them  t'  oppress 
An  innocent  lady,  gull  an  Emperor, 
More  generous  to  me  than  autumn-sun 
To  ripening  harvests. 

Auranthe.  No  more  insult,  sir. 

Albert.  Ay,  clutch  your  scabbard  ;  but,  for  prudence  sake. 
Draw  not  the  sword  ;  'twould  make  an  uproar,  Duke, 
You  would  not  hear  the  end  of.     At  nightfall 
Your  lady  sister,  if  I  guess  aright, 
Will  leave  this  busy  castle.     You  had  best 
Take  farewell  too  of  worldly  vanities. 

Conrad.  Vassal ! 

Albert.  To-morrow,  when  the  Emperor  sends 

For  loving  Conrad,  see  you  fawn  on  him. 
Good  even  ! 

Auranthe.  You'll  be  seen  ! 

Albert.  See  the  coast  clear  then. 


^ 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  303 


Auranihe  (as  he  goes).  Remorseless  Albert !    Cruel,  cruel 
wretch  ! 

[iS/je  lels  him  out. 
Conrad.  So,  wo  must  lick  the  dust  ? 
Auranihe.  I  follow  him. 

Conrad.  How  ?   Where  ?     The  plan  of  your  escape  ? 
Auranihe.  He  waits 

For  me  with  horses  by  the  forest-side, 
Northward. 

Conrad.         Good,  good  ;  he  dies.     You  go,  say  you  ? 
Auranihe.  Perforce. 

Conrad.  Be  speedy,  dai'kness  !     Till  tliat  comes. 
Fiends  keep  you  company  ! 

lExit. 
Auranihe.  And  you  !     And  you  ! 

And  all  men  !     Vanish  ! 

[^Retires  io  an  inner  apartment. 


Scene  II. — An  Apartment  in  the  Castle. 

Enter  Ludolpii  a7id  a  Page. 

Page.  Still  very  sick,  my  lord  ;  but  now  I  went. 
And  there    her  women,  in  a  mournful  throng, 
Stood  in  the  passage  whispering  ;    if  any 
Moved,  'twas  with  careful  steps,  and  hush'd  as  death  ; 
They  bade  me  stop. 

Ludolph.  Good  fellow,  once  again 

Make  soft  inquiry  ;   pr'ythee,  be  not  stay'd 
By  any  hindrance,  but  with  gentlest  force 
Break  through  her  weeping  servants,  till  thou  com'st 
E'en  to  her  chamber  door,  and  there,  fair  boy — 
If  with  thy  mother's  milk  thou  hast  suck'd  in 
Any  divine  eloquence — woo  her  ears 
With  plaints  for  me,  more  tender  than  the  voice 
Of  dying  Echo,  echoed. 

Page.  Kindest  master ! 

To  know  thee  sad  thus,  will  unloose  my  tongue 


304  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

In  mournful  syllables.     Let  but  my  words  reach 
Her  ears,  and  she  shall  take  them  coupled  with 
Moans  from  my  heart,  and  sighs  not  counterfeit. 
May  I  speed  better ! 

\^Exit  Page. 

Ltido/ph  (solus).         Auranthe  !     My  life  ! 
Long  have  1  loved  thee,  yet  till  now  not  loved  : 
Remembering,  as  I  do,  hard-hearted  times 
When  I  had  heard  e'en  of  thy  death  perhaps. 
And  thoughtless  ! — suffer'd  thee  to  pass  alone 
Into  Elysium  ! — now  I  follow  thee, 
A  substance  or  a  shadow,  whcresoe'er 
Thou  leadest  me — whether  thy  white  feet  press. 
With  pleasant  weight,  the  amorous-aching  earth, 
Or  thro'  the  air  thou  pioneerest  me, 
A  shade  !     Yet  sadly  I  predestinate  ! 
O,  unbenignest  Love,  why  wilt  thou  let 
Darkness  steal  out  upon  tlie  sleepy  world 
So  wearily,  as  if  night's  chariot-wheels 
Were  clogg'd  in  some  thick  cloud  ?     O,  changeful  Love, 
Let  not  her  steeds  with  drowsy-footed  pace 
Pass  the  high  stars,  before  sweet  embassage 
Comes  from  the  pillow'd  beauty  of  that  fair. 
Completion  of  all  delicate  Nature's  wit! 
Pout  her  faint  lips  anew  with  rubious  health ; 
And,  with  thine  infant  fingers,  lift  the  fringe 
Of  her  sick  eyelids ;  that  those  eyes  may  glow 
With  wooing  light  upon  me,  ere  the  morn 
Peers  with  disrelish,  gray,  barren,  and  cold  ! 

[Enter  Geusa  cmd  Courtiers. 
Otho  calls  me  his  Lion — should  I  blush 
To  be  so  tamed  ?  so — 

Gersa.  Do  me  the  courtesy, 

Gentlemen,  to  pass  on. 

\st  Knight.  We  are  your  servants. 

[Exeunt.  Courtiers. 

Ludolph.  It  seems  then,  sir,  you  have  found  out  the  man 
You  would  confer  with  ; — me  ? 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  305 


Gersa.  If  I  break  not 

Too  much  upon  your  (houglitful  mood,  I  will 
Claim  a  brief  while  your  patience. 

Ludolph.  For  what  cause 

Soe'er,  J  shall  be  honor'd. 

Gersa.  I  not  less. 

Ludolph.  What  may  it  be  ?     No  trifle  can  take  place 
Of  such  deliberate  prologue,  serious  'havior. 
But,  be  it  what  it  may,  I  cannot  fail 
To  listen  with  no  common  interest ; 
For  tho'  so  new  your  presence  is  to  me, 
I  have  a  soldier's  friendship  for  your  fame. 
Please  you  explain. 

Gersa.  As  thus  : — for,  pardon  me, 

1  cannot,  in  plain  terms,  grossly  assault 
A  noble  nature ;  and  would  faintly  sketch 
What  your  quick  apprehension  will  fill  up ; 
So  finely  I  esteem  you. 

Ludolph.  I  attend. 

Gersa.  Your  generous  father,  most  illustrious  Otho, 
Sits  in  the  banquet-room  among  his  chiefs ; 
His  wine  is  bitter,  for  you  are  not  there ; 
His  eyes  are  fix'd  still  on  the  open  doors, 
And  ev'ry  passer  in  he  frowns  upon. 
Seeing  no  Ludolph  comes. 

Ludolph.  I  do  neglect. 

Gersa.  And  for  your  absence  may  I  guess  the  cause  ? 

Ludolph.  Stay  there  !     No — guess  ?     More  princely  you 
must  be 
Than  to  make  guesses  at  me.     'Tis  enough. 
I'm  sorry  I  can  hear  no  more. 

Gersa.  And  I 

As  grieved  to  force  it  on  you  so  abrupt ; 
Yet,  one  day,  you  must  know  a  grief,  whose  sting 
Will  sharpen  more  the  longer  'tis  conceal'd. 

Ludolph.  Say  it  at  once,  sir  !  dead — dead — is  she  dead  ? 

Gersa.  Mine  is  a  cruel  task  :  she  is  not  dead, 
And  would,  for  your  sake,  she  were  innocent. 


306  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Ludolph.  Hungarian !  Thou  amazest  me  beyond 
All  scope  of  thought,  convulsest  my  heart's  blood 
To  deadly  churning !     Gersa,  you  are  young, 
As  I  am ;  let  me  observe  you,  face  to  face  : 
Not  gray-brow'd  like  the  poisonous  Ethelbert, 
No  rheumed  eyes,  no  furrowing  of  age, 
No  wrinkles,  where  all  vices  nestle  in 
Like  crannied  vermin — no !  but  fresh  and  young. 
And  hopeful  featured.     Ha  !  by  Heaven  you  weep  ! 
Tears,  human  tears  !     Do  you  repent  you  then 
Of  a  curs'd  torturer's  office  ?     Why  shouldst  join — 
Tell  me — the  league  of  devils  ?     Confess — confess — 
The  lie ! 

Gersa.     Lie  ! — but  begone  all  ceremonious  points 
Of  honor  battailous  !     I  could  not  turn 
My  wrath  against  thee  for  the  orbed  world.  . 

Ludolph.  Your  wrath,  weak  boy  ?    Tremble  at  mine,  unless 
Retraction  follow  close  upon  the  heels 
Of  that  late  stounding  insult !     Why  has  my  sword 
Not  done  already  a  sheer  judgment  on  thee  ? 
Despair,  or  eat  ihy  words  !     Why,  thou  wast  nigh 
Whimpering  away  my  reason  !     Hark  'e,  sir, 
It  is  no  secret,  that  Erminia, 
Erminia,  sir,  was  hidden  in  your  tent, — 
O  bless'd  asylum  !     Comfortable  home  ! 
Begone  !     I  pity  thee  ;  thou  art  a  gull, 
Erminia's  last  new  puppet ! 

Gersa.  Furious  fire  ! 

Thou  mak'st  me  boil  as  hot  as  thou  canst  flame ! 
And  in  thy  teeth  I  give  thee  back  the  lie  ! 
Thou  liest !     Thou,  Auranthe's  fool !     A  wittol ! 

Ludolph.  Look  !  look  at  this  bright  sword  : 
There  is  no  part  of  it,  to  the  very  hilt. 
But  shall  indulge  itself  about  thine  heart ! 
Draw  !  but  remember  thou  must  cower  thy  plumes, 
As  yesterday  the  Arab  made  thee  sloop. 

Gersa.  Patience  !  Not  here  ;  I  would  not  spill  thy  blood 
Here,  underneath  this  roof  where  Otho  breathes, — 
Thy  father, — almost  mine. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  307 


Ludolph.  O  faltering  coward  ! 

[Enter  Page. 
Stay,  stay  ;  here  is  one  1  have  lialf  a  word  with. 
Well  ?     What  ails  thee,  child  ? 

Page.  My  lord  ! 

Ludolph.  What  wouldst  say  ? 

Page.  They  are  fled  ! 

Ludolph.  They!  Who? 

Page.  When  anxiously 

I  hasten'd  back,  your  grieving  messenger, 
I  found  the  stairs  all  dark,  the  lamps  extinct, 
And  not  a  foot  or  whisper  to  be  heard. 
I  thought  her  dead,  and  on  the  lowest  step 
Sat  listening  ;   when  presently  came  by 
Two  muffled  up, — one  sighing  heavily, 
The  other  cursing  low,  whose  voice  I  knew 
For  the  Duke  Conrad's.     Close  I  followed  them 
Thro'  the  dark  ways  they  chose  to  the  open  air ; 
And,  as  I  foUow'd,  heard  my  lady  speak. 

Ludolph.  Thy  life  answers  the  truth  ! 

Page.  The  chamber's  empty  ! 

Ludolph.  As  I  will  be  of  mercy  !     So,  at  last, 
This  nail  is  in  my  temples  ! 

Gersa.  Be  calm  in  this. 

Ludolph.  I  am. 

Gersa.  And  Albert  too  has  disappear'd  ; 

Ere  I  met  you,  I  sought  him  every  where  ; 
You  would  not  hearken. 

Ludolph.  Which  way  went  they,  boy  ? 

Gersa.  I'll  hunt  with  you. 

Ludolj)h.  No,  no,  no.     My  senses  are 

Still  whole.     [  have  survived.     My  arm  is  strong, — 
My  appetite  sharp — for  revenge  !     I'll  no  sharer 
In  my  feast ;   my  injury  is  all  my  own. 
And  so  is  my  revenge,  my  lawful  chattels ! 
Terrier,  ferret  them  out !     Burn — burn  the  witch  ! 
Trace  me  their  footsteps  !     Away  ! 

[Exeunt. 


308  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


ACT     V. 

Scene  I. — A  part  of  the.  Forest. 

Enter  Conrad  and  Atjranthe. 

Auranthe.  Go  no  further  ;  not  a  step  more.     Thou  art 
A  master-plague  in  the  midst  of  miseries. 
Go, — I  fear  thee  !     I  tremble  every  limb, 
Who  never  shook  before.     There's  moody  death 
In  thy  resolved  looks  !     Yes,  I  could  kneel 
To  pray  thee  far  away  !     Conrad,  go  !  go ! — 
There  !  yonder  underneath  the  boughs  I  see 
Our  horses  ! 

Conrad.  Ay,  and  the  man. 

Auranthe.  Yes,  he  is  there  ? 

Go,  go, — no  blood  \  no  blood  ! — go,  gentle  Conrad  ! 

Conrad.  Farewell ! 

Auranthe.  Farewell!    For  this  Heaven  pardon  you  ? 

l^Exit  Auranthe. 

Conrad.  If  he  survive  one  hour,  then  may  I  die 
In  unamagined  tortures,  or  breathe  through 
A  long  life  in  the  foulest  sink  o'  the  world  !    . 
He  dies !     'Tis  well  she  do  not  advertise 
The  cailitTof  the  cold  steel  at  his  back. 

[^Eodt  CONKAD. 

Enter  Ltjdolph  and  Page. 

Ludolph.  Miss'd  the  vvay,  boy  ?     Say  not  that   on  your 
peril  ! 

Page.  Indeed,  indeed  I  cannot  trace  them  further. 

Ludolph.  Must  I  stop  here  1     Here  solitary  die  ? 
Stifled  beneath  the  thick  oppressive  shade 
Of  these  dull  bouglis, — this  oven  of  dark  thickets, — 
Silent, — without  revenge  ? — pshaw  ! — bitter  end, — 
A  bitter  death, — a  suffocating  death, — 
A  gnawing — silent — deadly,  quiet  death  ! 
Escaped  1 — fled  ? — vanish'd  ?  melted  into  air  ? 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  309 


She's  gone  !     I  cannot  clutch  her  !  no  revenge  ! 
A  muffled  death,  ensnared  in  horrid  silence! 
Suck'd  to  my  grave  amid  a  dreamy  calm  ! 
O,  where  is  that  illustrious  noise  of  war, 
To  smother  up  this  sound  of  laboring  breath, 
This  rustle  of  the  trees ! 

[AuRANTHE  shrieks  at  a  distance. 

Page.  My  lord,  a  noise  ! 

This  way — hark  ! 

Ludolph.  Yes,  yes  !     A  hope  !     A  music  ! 

A  glorious  clamor  !     How  I  live  again  ! 


[Exeunt. 


Scene  II. — Another  part  of  the  Forest. 

Enter  Albert  [wounded). 

Albert.  Oh  !  for  enough  life  to  support  me  on 
To  Otho's  feet ! 

Enter  LuDOLrH. 

Ludolph.  Thrice  villanous,  stay  there  ! 

Tell  me  where  that  detested  woman  is. 
Or  this  is  through  thee  ! 

Albert.  My  good  Prince,  with  me 

The  sword  has  done  its  worst ;  not  without  worst 
Done  to  another, — Conrad  has  it  home  ! 
I  see  you  know  it  all  ! 

Ludolph.  '      Where  is  his  sister  ? 

Elder  Auranthe. 

Auranthe.  Albert ! 

Ludolph.  Ha  !     There  !  there  ! — He  is  the  paramour  !- 
There — hug  him — dying  !     O,  thou  innocence. 
Shrine  him  and  comfort  him  at  his  last  gasp, 
Kiss  down  his  eyelids !     Was  he  not  thy  love  ? 
Wilt  thou  forsake  him  at  his  latest  hour  ? 
14* 


310  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Keep  fearful  and  aloof  from  his  last  gaze, 
His  most  uneasy  moments,  when  cold  death 
Stands  with  the  door  ajar  to  let  him  in  ? 

Albert.  O  that  that  door  with  hollow  slam  would  close 
Upon  me  sudden  !  for  1  cannot  meet, 
In  all  the  unknown  chambers  of  the  dead, 
Such  horrors ! 

Ludolph.  Auranthe  !  what  can  he  mean  ? 

What  .horrors  ?     Is  it  not  a  joyous  time  ? 
Am  I  not  married  to  a  paragon 
"  Of  personal  beauty  and  untainted  soul  ?" 
A  blushing  fair-eyed  purity  ?     A  sylph, 
Whose  snowy  timid  hand  has  never  sinn'd 
Beyond  a  flower  pluck'd,  white  as  itself? 
Albert,  you  do  insult  my  bride — your  mistress — 
To  talk  of  horrors  on  our  wedding-night  ! 

Albert.  Alas  !  poor  Prince,  I  would  you  knew  my  heart ! 
'Tis  not  so  guilty — 

Ludolph.  Hear,  he  pleads  not  guilty  ! 

You  are  not  ?  or,  if  so,  what  matters  it  1 
You  have  escaped  me,  free  as  the  dusk  air, 
Hid  in  the  forest,  safe  from  my  revenge  ; 
I  cannot  catch  you  !     You  should  laugh  at  me, 
Poor  cheated  Ludolph  !     Make  the  forest  hiss 
With  jeers  at  me  !     You  tremble — faint  at  once, 
You  will  come  to  again.     O  cockatrice, 
I  have  you  !     Whither  wander  those  fair  eyes 
To  entice  the  devil  to  your  help,  that  he 
May  change  you  to  a  spider,  so  to  ci^wl 
Into  some  cranny  to  escape  my  wrath  ? 

Albert.  Sometimes  the  counsel  of  a  dying  man 
Doth  operate  quietly  when  his  breath  is  gone  : 
Disjoin  those  hands — part — part — do  not  destroy 
Each  other — forget  her  ! — Our  miseries 
Are  equal  shared,  and  mercy  is — 

Ludolph.  A  boon 

When  one  can  compass  it.     Auranthe,  try 
Your  oratory  ;  your  breath  is  not  so  hitch'd. 
Ay,  stare  for  help  !  [Albert  dies. 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  311 


There  goes  a  spotted  soul 
Howling  in  vain  along  the  hollow  night ! 
Hear  him  !     He  calls  you — sweet  Auranthe,  come  ! 

Auraiithe.  Kill  me  ! 

Ludo/ph.  No!    What?    Upon  our  marriage-night  ? 

The  earth  would  shudder  at  so  foul  a  deed  ! 
A  fair  bride  !     A  sweet  bride  !     An  innocent  bride  ! 
No  !  we  must  revel  it,  as  'tis  in  use 
In  times  of  delicate  brilliant  ceremony  : 
Come,  let  me  lead  you  to  our  halls  again  ! 
Nay,  linger  not ;   make  no  resistance,  sweet ; — 
Will  you  ?     Ah,  wretch,  thou  canst  not,  for  I  have 
The  strength  of  twenty  lions  'gainst  a  lamb  ! 
Now — one  adieu  for  Albert ! — Come  away  ! 

[Exeunt. 


Scene  III. — An  inner  Court  of  the  Castle. 

Enter  Sigifred,  Gonfred,  and  Theodore,  meeting. 

1st  Knight.  Was  ever  such  a  night  ? 

Sigifred.  What  horrors  more  ? 

Things  unbelieved  one  hour,  so  strange  they  are, 
The  next  hour  stamps  with  credit. 

Isl  Knight.  Your  last  news  ? 

Gonfred.  After  the  page's  story  of  the  death 
Of  Albert  and  Duke  Conrad  ? 

Sigifred.  And  the  return 

Of  Ludolph  with  tlie  Princess. 

Gonfred.  No  more,  save 

Prince  Gersa's  freeing  Abbot  Ethel bert, 
And  the  sweet  lady,  fair  Erminia, 
From  prison. 

1st  Knight.  Where  are  they  now  ?     Hast  yet  heard  ? 

Gonfred.  With  the  sad  Emperor  they  are  closeted ; 
I  saw  the  three  pass  slowly  up  the  stairs. 
The  lady  weeping,  the  old  abbot  cowl'd. 


312  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Sigifred.  What  next  ? 

1st  Knight.  1  ache  to  think  on't. 

Gonfred.  'Tis  with  fate. 

1*/  Knight.  One  while  these  proud  towers  are  hushed   as 

death. 
Gonfred.  The   next  our  poor  Prince  fills  the  arched  rooms 
With  ghastly  ravings. 

Sigifred.  I  do  fear  his  brain. 

Gonfred.  I  will  see  more.     Bear  you  so  stout  a  heart  ? 

[Exeunt  into  the  Castle. 


Scene  IV. — A  Cabinet,  opening  towards  a  terrace- 
Otho,  Erminia,  Ethelbert,  and  a  Physician,  discovered. 
Otho.  O,  my  poor  boy !  My  son  !  My  son  !  My  Ludolph  ! 
Have  ye  no  comfort  for  me,  ye  physicians 
Of  the  weak  body  and  soul  ? 

Ethelbert.  'Tis  not  in  medicine, 

Either  of  heaven  or  earth,  to  cure,  unless 
Fit  time  be  chosen  to  administer. 

Otho.  A  kind  forbearance,  holy  abbot.     Come, 
Erminia  ;  here,  sit  by  me,  gentle  girl  ; 
Give  me  thy  hand  ;  hast  thou  forgiven  me  ? 

Erminia.  Would  I  were  with  the  saints  to  pray  for  you  ! 
Otho.  Why  will  ye  keep  me  from  my  darling  child  ? 
Physician.  Forgive  me,  but  he  must  not  see  thy  face. 
Otho.  Is  then  a  father's  countenance  a  Gorgon  ? 
Hath  it  not  comfort  in  it  ?     Would  it  not 
Console  my  poor  boy,  cheer  him,  help  his  spirits  1 
Let  me  embrace  him  ;  let  me  speak  to  him , 
I  will  !     Who  hinders  me  ?     Who's  Emperor  ? 

Physician.  You   may  not.  Sire  ;   'twould   overwhelm  him 
quite, 
He  is  so  full  of  grief  and  passionate  wrath; 
Too  heavy  a  sigh  would  kill  him,  or  do  worse. 
He  must  be  saved  by  fine  contrivances  ; 
And,  most  especially,  we  must  keep  clear 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  313 


Out  of  his  sight  a  father  whom  he  loves ; 
His  heart  is  full,  it  can  contain  no  more, 
And  do  its  ruddy  office. 

EtheJiert,  Sage  advice ; 

We  must  endeavor  how  to  ease  and  slacken 
The  tight-wound  energies  of  his  despair, 
Not  make  them  tenser. 

Otho.  Enough  !  I  hear,  I  hear. 

Yet  you  were  about  to  advise  more, — I  listen. 

Ethelbert.  This  learned  doctor  will  agree  with  me, 
That  not  in  the  smallest  point  should  he  be  thwarted. 
Or  gainsaid  by  one  word  ;  his  very  motions, 
Nods,  becks,  and  hints,  should  be  obeyed  with  care, 
Even  on  the  moment ;  so  his  troubled  mind 
May  cure  itself. 

Physician.         There  are  no  other  means. 

Otho.  Open  the  door  ;  let's  hear  if  all  is  quiet. 

Physician.  Beseech  you.  Sire,  forbear. 

Erminia.  Do,  do. 

Otho.  I  command  ! 

Open  it  straight ; — hush  ! — quiet  ! — my  lost  boy  ! 
My  miserable  child  ! 

Ludolph  (indistinctly  loithout).  Fill,  fill  my  goblet, — here's 
a  health ! 

Erminia.  O,  close  the  door  ! 

0/7(0.  Let,  let  me  hear  his  voice  ;  this  cannot  last : 
And  fain  would  I  catch  up  his  dying  words, 
Though  my  own  knell  they  be  !     This  cannot  last ! 
O  let  me  catch  his  voice — for  lo  !  I  hear 
A  whisper  in  this  silence  that  he's  dead  ! 
It  is  so  !     Gersa  ? 

Enter  Gersa. 

Physician.  Say,  how  fares  the  prince  ? 

Gersa.   More  calm  ;   his  features  are  less  wild  and  flush'd  ; 
Once  he  complain'd  of  weariness. 

Physician.  Indeed ! 

'Tis  good, — 'tis  good  ;  let  him  but  fall  asleep, 
That  saves  him. 


314  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Otho.  Gersa,  watch  him  like  a  child  ; 

Ward  him  from  harm, — and  bring  me  better  news ! 

Physician.  Humor  him  to  the  height.     I  fear  to  go ; 
For  should  he  catch  a  glimpse  of  my  dull  garb, 
It  might  affright  him,  fill  him  with  suspicion 
That  we  believe  him  sick,  which  must  not  be. 

Gersa.  I  will  invent  what  soothing  means  I  can. 

[Exit  Gersa. 

Physician.  This  should  cheer  up  your  Highness  ;  weari- 
ness 
Is  a  good  symptom,  and  most  favorable  ; 
It  gives  me  pleasant  hopes.     Please  you,  walk  forth 
Upon  the  terrace  ;  the  refreshing  air 
Will  blow  one  half  of  your  sad  doubts  away.  [Exeunt. 


Scene  V. — A  Banqueting  Hall,  brilliantly  illuminated,  and  set 
forth  with  all  costly  magiiijicence,  with  Supper-tables,  laden 
with  services  of  Gold  and  Silver.  A  door  in  the  back  scene, 
guarded  by  two  Soldiers.  Lords,  Ladies,  Knights,  Gentle- 
men, 8fC.,  whispering  sadly,  and  ranging  themselves  ;  part  en- 
tering and  part  discovered. 

1st  Knight.  Grievously  are  we  tantalized,  one  and  all ; 
Sway'd  here  and  there,  commanded  to  and  fro. 
As  though  we  were  the  shadows  of  a  sleep. 
And  link'd  to  a  dreaming  fancy.     What  do  we  here  ? 

Gonfred.  I  am  no  seer  ;  you  know  we  must  obey 
The  prince  from  A  to  Z,  though  it  should  be 
To  set  the  place  in  flames.     I  pray,  hast  heard 
Where  the  most  wicked  Princess  is  ? 

1,?^  Knight.  There,  sir, 

In  the  next  room  ;  have  you  remark'd  those  two 
Stout  soldiers  posted  at  the  door  ? 

Gonfred.  For  what  ? 

[They  whisper. 

1st  Lady.  How  ghast  a  train  ! 

2nrf  Lady.  Sure  this  should  be  some  splendid  burial. 

1st  Lady.  What   fearful   whispering  !      See,  see, — Gersa 
there  ! 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  315 


Enter  Gersa. 
Gcrsa.  Put  on  your  brightest  looks  ;  smile  if  you  can  ; 
Behave  as  all  were  happy  ;  keep  your  eyes 
From  tlie  least  watcli  upon  him  ;  if  he  speaks 
To  any  one,  answer,  collectedly. 
Without  surprise,  his  questions,  howe'er  strange. 
Do  this  to  the  utmost — though,  alas  !  with  me 
The  remedy  grows  hopeless  !     Here  he  comes, — 
Observe  what  I  have  said — show  no  surprise. 

Enter  huDOLFS,  followed  ly  Sigifred  and  Page. 

Ludolph.  A  splendid  company  !  rare  beauties  here  ! 
I  should  have  Orphean  lips,  and  Plato's  fancy, 
Amphion's  utterance,  toned  with  his  lyre, 
Or  the  deep  key  of  Jove's  sonorous  mouth, 
To  give  fit  salutation.     Methought  I  heard. 
As  I  came  in,  some  whispers — what  of  that  ? 
'Tis  natural  men  should  whisper ;  at  the  kiss 
Of  Psyche  given  by  Love,  there  was  a  buzz 
Among  the  gods  ! — and  silence  is  as  natural. 
These  draperies  are  fine,  and,  being  a  mortal, 
I  should  desire  no  better  .  yet,  in  truth, 
There  must  be  some  superior  costliness, 
Some  wider-domed  high  magnificence  ! 
I  would  have,  as  a  mortal  I  may  not. 
Hangings  of  heaven's  clouds,  purple  and  gold, 
Slung  from  the  spheres ;  gauzes  of  silver  mist, 
Loop'd  up  with  cords  of  twisted  wreathed  light, 
And  tassel 'd  round  with  weeping  meteors  ! 
These  pendent  lamps  and  chandeliers  are  bright 
As  earthly  fires  from  dull  dross  can  be  cleansed  ; 
Yet  could  my  eyes  drink  up  intenser  beams 
Undazzled — this  is  darkness — when  I  close 
These  lids,  I  see  far  fiercer  brilliances, — 
Skies  full  of  splendid  moons,  and  shooting  stars, 
And  spouting  exhalations,  diamond  fires, 
And  panting  fountains  quivering  with  deep  glows  ! 
Yes — this  is  dark — is  it  not  dark  ? 


316  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Sigifred.  My  Lord, 

'Tis  late  ;  the  lights  of  festival  are  ever 
Quench'd  in  the  morn. 

Ludolph.  'Tis  not  to-morrow  tlien  1 

Sigifred.  'Tis  early  dawn. 

Gersa.  Indeed  full  time  we  slept ; 

Say  you  so,  Prince  ? 

Ludolph.  1  say  1  quarrel'd  with  you  ; 

We  did  not  tilt  each  other — that's  a  blessing, — 
Good  gods  !  no  innocent  blood  upon  my  head  ! 

Sigifred.  Retire,  Gersa  ! 

Ludolph.  There  should  be  three  more  here 

For  two  of  them,  they  stay  away  perhaps, 
Being  gloomy-minded,  haters  of  fair  revels, — 
They  know  their  own  thoughts  best. 

As  for  the  third, 
Deep  blue  eyes,  semi-shaded  in  white  lids, 
Finish'd  with  lashes  fine  for  more  soft  shade, 
Completed  by  her  twin-arch'd  ebon-brows  ; 
White  temples,  of  exactest  elegance. 
Of  even  mould,  felicitous  and  smooth; 
Cheeks  fashion'd  tenderly  on  either  side, 
So  perfect,  so  divine,  that  our  poor  eyes 
Are  dazzled  with  the  sweet  proportioning, 
And  wonder  that  'tis  so — the  magic  chance  ! 
Her  nostrils,  small,  fragrant,  fairy-delicate  ; 
Her  lips — I  swear  no  human  bones  e'er  wore 
So  taking  a  disguise  ; — you  shall  behold  her  ! 
We'll  have  her  presently  ;   ay,  you  shall  see  her, 
And  wonder  at  her,  friends,  she  is  so  fair ; 
She  is  the  world's  chief  jewel,  and,  by  heaven, 
She's  mine  by  right  of  marriage ! — she  is  mine! 
Patience,  good  people,  in  fit  time  I  send 
A  summoner, — she  will  obey  my  call, 
Being  a  wife  most  mild  and  dutiful. 
First  I  would  hear  what  music  is  prepared 
To  herald  and  receive  her  ;   let  me  hear  ! 

Sigifred.  Bid  the  musicians  soothe  him  tenderly. 

[A  soft,  strain  of  Music* 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  317 


LudoJph.  Ye  have  none  better  ?     No,  I  am  content ; 
'Tis  a  rich  sobbing  melody,  with  reliefs 
Full  and  majestic  ;  it  is  well  enough, 
And  will  be  sweeter,  when  you  see  her  pace 
Sweeping  into  this  presence,  glistened  o'er 
With  emptied  caskets,  and  her  train  upheld 
By  ladies,  habited  in-robes  of  lawn, 
Sprinkled  with  golden  crescents,  others  bright 
In  silks,  with  spangles  shower'd,  and  bow'd  to 
By  Duchesses  and  pearled  Margravines  ! 
Sad,  that  the  fairest  creature  of  the  earth — 
I  pray  you  mind  me  not — 'tis  sad,  I  say, 
That  the  extremest  beauty  of  the  world 
Should  so  entrench  herself  away  from  me. 
Behind  a  barrier  of  engender'd  guilt ! 

2nd  Lady.  Ah  !  what  a  moan  ! 

1st  Knight.  Most  piteous  indeed  ! 

LudoJph.  She  shall  be  brought  before  this  company, 
And  then — then — 

1st  Lady.  He  muses. 

Gersa.  O,  Fortune,  where  will  this  end  ? 

Sigifred.   I  guess  his  purpose  !     Indeed  he  must  not  have 
That  pestilence  brought  in, — that  cannot  be,  • 

There  we  must  stop  him. 

Gersa.  I  am  lost !     Hush,  hush  ! 

He  is  about  to  rave  again. 

Lndolph.  A  barrier  of  guilt!     I  was  the  fool, 
She  Avas  the  cheater  !     Who's  the  cheater  now, 
And  who  the  fool  ?     The  entrapp'd,  the  caged  fool. 
The  bird-limed  raven  ?     She  shall  croak  to  death 
Secure  !     Methinks  I  have  her  in  my  fist. 
To  crush  her  with  my  heel !     Wait,  wait !     I  marvel 
My  father  keeps  away.     Good  friend — ah  !  Sigifred  ? 
Do  bring  him  to  me, — and  Erminia, 
I  fain  would  see  before  I  sleep — and  Ethel bert. 
That  he  may  bless  me,  as  I  know  he  will, 
Though  I  have  cursed  him. 

Sigifred.  Rather  sutler  me 

To  lead  you  to  them. 


318  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Ludolph.  No,  excuse  me, — no ! 

The  day  is  not  quite  done.     Go,  bring  them  hither, 

[Exit    SiGIFRED. 

Certes,  a  father's  smile  should,  like  sun  light, 

Slant  on  my  sheaved  harvest  of  ripe  bliss. 

Besides,  I  thirst  to  pledge  my  lovely  brfde 

In  a  deep  goblet :  let  me  see — what  wine  ? 

The  strong  Iberian  juice,  or  mellow  Greek  ? 

Or  pale  Calabrian  ?     Or  the  Tuscan  grape  ? 

Or  of  old  Etna's  pulpy  wine-presses, 

Black  stain'd  with  the  fat  vintage,  as  it  were 

The  purple  slaughter-house,  where  Bacchus'  self 

Prick'd  his  own  swollen  veins  !     Where  is  my  page  ? 

Page.  Hoj'e,  here ! 

Ludolph.  Be  ready  to  obey  me  ;   anon  thou  shalt 
Bear  a  soft  message  for  me  ;   for  the  hour 
Draws  near  when  I  must  make  a  winding  up 
Of  bridal  mysteries — a  fine-spun  vengeance  ! 
Carve  it  on  my  tomb,  that,  when  I  rest  beneath. 
Men  shall  confess  this  Prince  was  guU'd  and  cheated. 
But  from  the  ashes  of  disgrace  he  rose 
More  than  a  fiery  dragon,  and  did  burn 
His  ignominy  up  in  purging  fires ! 
Did  I  not  send,  sir,  but  a  moment  past, 
For  my  father  ? 

Gersa.  You  did. 

Ludolph.  Perhaps  'twould  be 

Much  better  he  came  not. 

Gersa.  He  enters  now  ! 

Enter  Otho,  Erminia,  Ethelbert,  Sigifred,  and  Physician. 

Ludolph.  Oh  !  thou  good  man,  against  whose  sacred  head 
I  was  a  mad  conspirator,  chiefly,  too. 
For  the  sake  of  my  fair  newly  wedded  wife. 
Now  to  be  punished  ! — do  not  look  so  sad ! 
Those  charitable  eyes  will  thaw  my  heart, 
Those  tears  will  wash  away  a  just  resolve, 
A  verdict  ten  times  sworn  !     Awake — awake — 


OTHO  THE  GREAT.  319 


Put  on  a  judge's  brow,  and  use  a  tongue 
Made  iron-stern  by  habit !     Thou  shalt  see 
A  deed  to  be  applauded,  'scribed  in  gold ! 
Join  a  loud  voice  to  mine,  and  so  denounce 
What  I  alone  will  execute  ! 

Otho.  Dear  son, 

What  is  it  ?     By  your  father's  love,  I  sue 
That  it  be  nothing  merciless  ! 

Ludolph.  To  that  demon  ? 

Not  so  !     No  !     She  is  in  temple-stall 
Being  garnish'd  for  the  sacrifice,  and  I, 
The  Priest  of  Justice,  will  immolate  her 
Upon  the  altar  of  wrath  !     She  stings  me  through  ! — 
Even  as  the  worm  doth  feed  upon  the  nut. 
So  she,  a  scorpion,  preys  upon  my  brain ! 
I  feel  her  gnawing  here  !     Let  her  but  vanish, 
Then,  father,  I  will  lead  your  legions  forth. 
Compact  in  steeled  squares,  and  speared  files, 
And  bid  our  trumpets  speak  a  fell  rebuke 
To  nations  drowsed  in  peace  ! 

Otho.  To-morrow,  son, 

Be  your  word  law ;  forget  to  day — 

Ludolph.  I  will 

When  I  have  finish'd  it !     Now, — now,  I'm  pight. 
Tight- footed  for  the  deed  ! 

Erminia.  Alas  !  Alas  ! 

Ludolph.  What  angel's  voice  is  that  ?     Erminia  ! 
Ah !  gentlest  creature,  whose  sweet  innocence 
Was  almost  murder'd  ;  I  am  penitent. 
Wilt  thou  forgive  me  ?     And  thou,  holy  man, 
Good  Ethelbert,  shall  I  die  in  peace  with  you  ? 

Erminia.  Die,  my  lord  ! 

Ludolph.  I  feel  it  possible. 

Otho.  Physician  ? 

Physician.  I  fear  me  he  is  past  my  skill. 

Otho.  Not  so ! 

Ludolph.    I  see  it — I  see  it — I  have  been  wandering  ! 
Half  mad — not  right  here — I  forget  my  purpose. 


320  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Bestir — bestir — Auranthe  !     Ha!  ha!  ha! 
Youngster  !  Page !  go  bid  thorn  drag  her  to  me  ! 
Obey  !     This  shall  finish  it ! 

[Draws  a  dagger. 

Otho.  Oh,  my  son  !  )Tiy  son  ! 

Sigifred.  This  must  not  be — stop  there  ! 

Ludolpli.  Am  I  obey'd  ? 

A  little  talk  with  her — no  harm — haste  !  haste  ! 

[^Exit  Page. 
Set  her  before  me — never  fear  I  can  strike. 

Several  Voices.  My  Lord !  My  Lord  ! 

Gersa.  Good  Prince ! 

Ludolph.  Why  do  ye  trouble  me  ?     out — out — away  ! 
There  she  is  !  take  that !  and  that !  no  no, 
That's  not  well  done. — Where  is  she  ? 

[The  doors  open.     Enter  Page.     Several  loomen  are  seen  grouped  about 
AuraJithe  in  the  inner-room. 

Page.     Alas  !     My  Lord,  my  Loz'd  !     they  cannot  move 
her  ! 
Her  arms  are  stiff, — her  fingers  clench'd  and  cold  ! 
Ludolph.  She's  dead  ! 

[Staggers  and  Jails  into  their  arms. 
Ethelhcrt.  Take  away  the  dagger. 
Gersa.  Softly  ;  so  ! 

Otho.  Thank  God  for  that ! 

Sigifred.  It  could  not  harm  him  now. 

Gersa.  No  ! — brief  be  his  anguish  ! 

Ludolph.  She's  gone  !    I  am  content — Nobles,  good  night ! 
We  are  all  weary — faint — set  ope  the  doors — 
I  will  to  bed  ! — To-morrow — 

[Dies. 

THE    CURTAIN    FALLS. 


KING   STEPHEN. 

A  DRAMATIC  FRAGMENT. 


ACT  I. 

Scr.^E  1.— Field  of  Battle. 
Alarum.     Enter  King  Stephen,  Knights,  and  Soldiers. 

Stephen.  If  shame  can  on  a  soldier's  vein-swoH'n  front 
Spread  deeper  crimson  than  the  battle's  toil, 
Bluch  in  your  casing  helmets  !  for  see,  see  ! 
Yonder  my  chivalry,  my  pride  of  war, 
Wrench'd  with  an  iron  hand  from  firm  array, 
Are  routed  loose  about  the  plashy  meads. 
Of  honor  forfeit.     O,  that  my  known  voice 
Could  reach  your  dastard  ears,  and  fright  you  more ! 
Fly,  cowards,  fly  !  Glocester  is  at  your  backs ! 
Throw  your  slack  bridles  o'er  the  flurried  manes, 
Ply  well  the  rowel  witli  faint  trembling  heels, 
Scampering  to  death  at  last ! 

1st  Knight.  The  enemy 

Bears  his  flaunt  standard  close  upon  their  rear. 

2nd  Knight.  Sure  of  a  bloody  prey,  seeing  the  fens 
Will  swamp  them  girth-deep. 

Stephen.  Over  head  and  ears. 

No  matter  !     'Tis  a  gallant  enemy  ; 
How  like  a  comet  he  goes  streaming  on. 


322  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

But  we  must  plague  him  in  the  flank, — hey,  friends  ? 
We  are  well  breath'd, — follow  ! 

Enter  Earl  Baldwin  and  Soldiers,  as  defeated. 

Stephen.  De  Redvers  ! 

What  is  the  monstrous  bugbear  that  can  fright 
Baldwin  ? 

Baldwin.  No  scare-crow,  but  the  fortunate  star 
Of  boisterous  Chester,  whose  fell  truncheon  now 
Points  level  to  the  goal  of  victory. 
This  way  he  comes,  and  if  you  would  maintain 
Your  person  unaffronted  by  vile  odds, 
Take  horse,  my  Lord. 

Stephen.  And  which  way  spur  for  life  ? 

Now  I  thank  Heaven  I  am  in  the  toils, 
That  soldiers  may  bear  witness  how  my  arm 
Can  burst  the  meshes.     Not  the  eagle  more 
Loves  to  beat  up  against  a  tyrannous  blast. 
Than  I  to  meet  the  torrent  of  my  foes. 
This  is  a  brag, — be't  so, — but  if  I  fall. 
Carve  it  upon  my  'scutcheon'd  sepulchre. 
On,  fellow  soldiers  !     Earl  of  Redvers,  back  ! 
Not  twenty  Earls  of  Chester  shall  brow-beat 
The  diadem. 

l^Exeunt.     Alarum. 


Scene  IL — Another  part  of  the  Field. 

Trumpets  sounding  a  Victory.     Enter  Glocester,  Knights,  and 

Forces. 

Glocester.  Now  may  we  lift  our  bruised  visors  up, 
And  take  the  flattering  freshness  of  the  air. 
While  the  wide  din  of  battle  dies  away 
Into  times  past,  yet  to  be  echoed  sure 
In  the  silent  pages  of  our  chroniclers. 


KING  STEPHEN.  323 


1st  Knight.     Will  Stephen's  death  be  mark'd  there,  my 
good  Lord, 
Or  that  we  gave  him  lodging  in  yon  towers  ? 

Glocester.  Fain  would  I  know  the  great  usurper's  fate. 

Enter  two  Captains  severally. 

1st  Captain.  My  Lord  ! 

2nd  Captain.  Most  noble  Earl ! 

1st  Captain.  The  King — 

2nd  Captain.  The  Empress  greets — 

Glocester.   What  of  the  King  ? 

1*^  Captain.  He  sole  and  lone  maintains 

A  hopeless  bustle  'mid  our  swarming  arms, 
And  with  a  nimble  savageness  attacks, 
Escapes,  makes  fiercer  onset,  then  anew 
Eludes  death,  giving  death  to  most  that  dare 
Trespass  within  the  circuit  of  his  sword  ! 
He  must  by  this  have  fallen.     Baldwin  is  taken; 
And  for  the  Duke  of  Bretagne,  like  a  stag 
He  flies,  for  the  Welsh  beagles  to  hunt  down. 
God  save  the  Empress  ! 

Glocester.  Now  our  dreaded  Queen : 

What  message  from  her  Highness  ? 

Und  Captain.  Royal  Maud 

From  the  throng'd  towers  of  Lincoln  hath  look'd  down, 
Like  Pallas  from  the  walls  of  Ilion, 
And  seen  her  enemies  havock'd  at  her  feet. 
She  greets  most  noble  Glocester  from  her  heart. 
Entreating  him,  his  captains,  and  brave  knights, 
To  grace  a  banquet.     The  high  city  gates 
Are  envious  which  shall  see  your  triumph  pass ; 
The  streets  are  full  of  music. 

Enter  2nd  Knight. 

Glocester.  Whence  come  you  ? 

2nd  Knight.  From  Stephen,  my  good  Prince, — Stephen  ! 
Stephen ! 


324  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Glocester.  Why  do  you  make  such  echoing  of  his  name  ? 

2nd  Knight.  Because  I  think,  my  lord,  he  is  no  man, 
But  a  fierce  demon,  'nointed  safe  from  wounds, 
And  misbaptized  with  a  Christian  name. 

Glocester.  A  mighty  soldier  ? — Does  he  still  hold  out  ? 

2nd  Knight.  He  shames  our  victory.     His  valor  still 
Keeps  elbow-room  amid  our  eager  swords, 
And  holds  our  bladed  falchions  all  aloof — 
His  gleaming  battle-axe  being  slaughter-sick, 
Smote  on  the  morion  of  a  Flemish  knight, 
Broke  short  in  his  hand  ;  upon  the  which  he  flung 
The  heft  away  with  such  a  vengeful  force, 
It  paunch 'd  the  Earl  of  Chester's  horse,  who  then 
Spleen-hearted  came  in  full  career  at  him. 

Glocester.  Did  no  one  take  him  at  a  vantage  then  ? 

2nd  Knight.  Three  then  with  tiger  leap  upon  him  flew, 
Whom,  with  his  sword  swift-drawn  and  nimbly  held. 
He  stung  aM'ay  again,  and  stood  to  breathe. 
Smiling.     Anon  upon  him  rush'd  once  more 
A  throng  of  foes,  and  in  this  renew'd  strife, 
My  sword  met  his  and  snapp'd  off  at  the  hilt. 

Glocester.  Come,  lead  me  to  this  man — and  let  us  move 
In  silence,  not  insulting  his  sad  doom 
Witli  clamorous  trumpets.     To  the  Empress  bear 
My  salutation  as  befits  the  time. 

[^Exeunt  Glocester  and  Forces. 


Scene  III. — The  Field  of  Battle.     Enter  Stepken  unarmed. 

Stephen.  Another  sword  !  And  what  if  I  could  seize 
One  from  Bellona's  gleaming  armory. 
Or  choose  the  fairest  of  her  sheaved  spears ! 
Where  are  my  enemies  ?     Here,  close  at  hand, 
Here  come  the  testy  brood.     O,  for  a  sword  ! 
I'm  faint — a  biting  sword  !     A  noble  sword  ! 
A  hedge-stake — or  a  ponderous  stone  to  hurl 
With  brawny  vengeance,  like  the  laborer  Cain. 


KING  STEPHEN.  32.1 


Conie  on !     Farewell  my  kingdom,  and  all  hail 
Thou  superb,  plumed,  and  helmcted  renown, 
All  hail — I  would  not  truck  this  brilliant  day 
To  rule  in  Pylos  with  a  Nestor's  beard — 
Come  on ! 

Enter  De  Kaims  and  Knights,  <^c. 

De  Kaims.  Is  't  madness  or  a  hunger  after  death 
i  hat  makes  thee  thus  unarm'd  throw  taunts  at  us  1 — 
Yield,  Stephen,  or  my  sword's  point  dips  in 
The  gloomy  current  of  a  traitor's  heart. 

Stephen.  Do  it,  De  Kaims,  I  will  not  budge  an  inch. 

De  Kaims.  Yes,  of  thy  madness  thou  shall  take  the  meed. 

Stephen.  Darest  thou  ? 

De  Kaims.  How  dare,  against  a  man  disarm'd? 

Stephen.  What  weapons  has  the  lion  but  himself! 
Come  not  near  me,  De  Kaims,  for  by  the  price 
Of  all  the  glory  I  have  won  this  day, 
Being  a  king,  I  will  not  yield  alive 
To  any  but  the  second  man  of  the  realm, 
Robert  of  Glocester. 

De  Kaims.  Thou  shalt  vail  to  me. 

Stephen.  Shall  I,  when  I  have  sworn  against  it,  sir  ? 
Thou  think'st  it  brave  to  take  a  breathing  king, 
That,  on  a  court-day  bow'd  to  haughty  Maud, 
The  awed  presence-chamber  may  be  bold 
To  whisper,  there's  the  man  who  took  alive 
Stephen — me — prisoner.     Certes,  De  Kaims, 
The  ambition  is  a  noble  one. 

De  Kaiins.  'Tis  true, 

And,  Stephen,  I  must  compass  it. 

Stephen.  No,  no, 

Do  not  tempt  me  to  throttle  you  on  the  gorge. 
Or  with  my  gauntlet  crush  your  hollow  breast, 
Just  when  your  knighthood  is  grown  ripe  and  full 
For  lordship. 

A  Soldier.     Is  an  honest  yeoman's  spear 
Of  no  use  at  a  need  ?     Take  that. 
15 


32f6  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Stephen.  Ah,  dastard  ! 

De  Kaims.    What,  you  are  vulnerable  !  my  prisoner  ! 

Stephen.    No,  not  yet.     I  disclaim  it,  and  demand 
Death  as  a  sovereign  right  unto  a  king 
Who  'sdains  to  yield  to  any  but  his  peer, 
If  not  in  title,  yet  in  noble  deeds, 
The  Earl  of  Glocester.     Stab  to  the  hilt,  De  Kaims, 
For  I  will  never  by  mean  hands  be  led 
From  this  so  famous  field.     Do  you  hear  !     Be  quick  ! 

Trumpets.    Enter  the  Earl  of  Chester  and  Knights. 


Scene  IV. — A  Presence  Chamber.  Queen  Maud  in  a  Chair  of 
State,  the  Earls  of  Glocester  and  Chester,  Lords,  Attend, 
ants. 

Maud.    Glocester,  no  more  :  I  will  behold  that  Boulogne  : 
Set  him  before  me.     Not  for  the  poor  sake 
Of  regal  pomp  and  a  vain-glorious  hour. 
As  thou  with  wary  speech,  yet  near  enough. 
Hast  hinted. 

Glocester.         Faithful  counsel  have  I  given  ; 
If  wary,  for  your  Highness'  benefit. 

Maud.    The  Heavens  forbid  that  I  should  not  think  so, 
For  by  thy  valor  have  I  won  this  realm, 
Which  by  thy  wisdom  I  will  ever  keep. 
To  sage  advisers  let  me  ever  bend 
A  meek  attentive  ear,  so  that  they  treat 
Of  the  wide  kingdom's  rule  and  government, 
Not  trenching  on  our  actions  personal. 
Advised,  not  school 'd,  I  would  be  ;  and  henceforth 
Spoken  to  in  clear,  plain,  and  open  terms, 
Not  side- ways  sermon'd  at. 

Glocester.  Then  in  plain  terms. 

Once  more  for  the  fallen  king — 

Maud.  Your  pardon,  Brother, 

I  would  no  more  of  that ;  for,  as  I  said, 


KING  STEPHEN.  327 


'Tis  not  for  worldly  pomp  I  wish  to  see 
The  rebel,  but  as  dooming  judge  to  give 
A  sentence  something  worthy  of  his  guilt. 

Glocester.  If 't  must  be  so,  I  '11  bring  him  to  your  presence. 

[^Exit  Glocester. 

Maud.    A  meaner  summoner  might  do  as  well — 
My  Lord  of  Chester,  is  't  true  what  I  hear 
Of  Stephen  of  Boulogne,  our  prisoner, 
That  he,  as  a  fit  penance  for  his  crimes. 
Eats  wholesome,  sweet,  and  palatable  food 
Off  Glocester's  golden  dishes — drinks  pure  wine, 
Lodges  soft  ? 

Chester.         More  than  that,  my  gracious  Queen, 
Has  anger'd  me.     The  noble  Earl,  methinks, 
Full  soldier  as  he  is,  and  without  peer 
In  counsel,  dreams  too  much  among  his  books. 
It  may  read  well,  but  sure  'tis  out  of  date 
To  play  the  Alexander  with  Darius. 

Maud.    Truth  !    I  think  so.   By  Heavens  it  shall  not  last ! 

Chester.    It  would  amaze  your  Highness  now  to  mark 
How  Glocester  overstrains  his  courtesy 
To  that  crime-loving  rebel,  that  Boulogne — 

Maud.    That  ingrate  ! 

Chester.  For  whose  vast  ingratitude 

To  our  late  sovereign  lord,  your  noble  sire, 
The  generous  Earl  condoles  in  his  mishaps, 
And  with  a  sort  of  lackeying  friendliness. 
Talks  off  the  mighty  frowning  from  his  brow, 
VVoos  him  to  hold  a  duct  in  a  smile, 
Or,  if  it  please  him,  play  an  hour  at  chess — 

Maud.    A  perjured  slave  ! 

Chester.  And  for  his  perjury, 

Glocester  has  fit  rewards — nay,  I  believe, 
He  sets  his  bustling  household's  wits  at  work 
For  flatteries  to  ease  this  Stephen's  hours, 
And  make  a  heaven  of  his  purgatory; 
Adorning  bondage  with  the  pleasant  gloss 
Of  feasts  and  music,  and  all  idle  shows 


328  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Of  indoor  pageantry  ;  while  syren  whispers, 
Predestined  for  his  ear,  'scape  as  half-check'd 
From  lips  the  courtliest  and  the  rubiest, 
Of  all  the  realm,  admiring  of  his  deeds. 

Maud.    A  frost  upon  his  summer  ! 

Chester.  A  queen's  nod 

Can  make  his  June  December.     Here  he  comes. 


THE    CAP   AND  BELLS; 

OR,  THE  JEALOUSIES. 

A    FAERY    TALE.     UNFINISHED. 


In  midmost  Ind,  beside  Hydaspes  cool, 
There  stood,  or  hover'd,  tremulous  in  the  air, 
A  faery  city,  'neath  the  potent  rule 
Of  Emperor  Elfinan  ;   famed  ev'rywhere 
For  love  of  mortal  women,  maidens  fair, 
Whose  lips  were  solid,  whose  soft  hands  were  made 
Of  a  fit  mould  and  beauty,  ripe  and  rare, 
To  pamper  his  slight  wooing,  warm,  yet  staid : 
He  lov'd  girls  smooth  as  shades,  but  hated  a  mere  shade. 


This  was  a  crime  forbidden  by  the  law ; 
And  all  the  priesthood  of  his  city  wept, 
For  ruin  and  dismay  they  well  foresaw. 
If  impious  prince  no  bound  or  limit  kept, 
And  faery  Zendervester  overslept ; 
They  wept,  he  sinn'd,  and  still  he  would  sin  on. 
They  dreamt  of  sin,  and  he  sinn'd  while  they  slept ; 
In  vain  the  pulpit  thunder'd  at  the  throne. 
Caricature  was  vain,  and  vain  the  tart  lampoon. 

*  This  Poem  was  written  subject  to  future  amendments  and  omissions :  it 
was  begun  without  a  plan,  and  without  any  prescribed  laws  for  the  supernatu- 
ral machinery. — Charles  Brown. 


330  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Which  seeing,  his  high  court  of  parliament 
Laid  a  remonstrance  at  his  Highness'  feet, 
Praying  his  royal  senses  to  content 
Themselves  with  what  in  faery  land  was  sweet, 
Befitting  best  that  shade  with  shade  should  meet ; 
Whereat,  to  calm  their  fears,  he  promised  soon 
From  mortal  tempters  all  to  make  retreat — 
Aye,  even  on  the  first  of  the  new  moon. 
An  immaterial  wife  to  espouse  as  heaven's  boon. 


IV. 

Meantime  he  sent  a  fluttering  embassy 
To  Pigmio,  of  Imaus  sovereign, 
To  half  beg,  and  half  demand,  respectfully, 
The  hand  of  his  fair  daughter  Bellanaine  ; 
An  audience  had,  and  speeching  done,  they  gain 
Their  point,  and  bring  the  weeping  bride  away ; 
Whom,  with  but  one  attendant,  safely  lain 
Upon  their  wings,  they  bore  in  bright  array. 
While  little  harps  were  touch'd  by  many  a  lyric  fay. 


V. 

As  in  old  pictures  tender  cherubim 
A  child's  soul  thro'  the  sapphired  canvas  bear. 
So,  through  a  real  heaven,  on  they  swim 
With  the  sweet  princess  on  her  plumaged  lair, 
Speed  giving  to  the  winds  her  lustrous  hair ; 
And  so  she  journcy'd,  sleeping  or  awake, 
Save  when,  for  healthful  exercise  and  air, 
She  chose  to  "  promener  a  I'aile,"  or  take 
A  pigeon's  somerset,  for  sport  or  change's  sake. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  331 


"  Dear  princess,  do  not  whisper  me  so  loud," 
Quoth  Corallina,  nurse  and  confidant, 

"  Do  not  you  see  there,  lurking  in  a  cloud. 
Close  at  your  back,  that  sly  old  Crafticant  ? 
He  hears  a  whisper  plainer  than  a  rant : 
Dry  up  your  tears,  and  do  not  look  so  blue  ; 
He's  Elfinan's  great  state-spy  militant, 
He's  running,  lying,  flying  footman,  too — 
Dear  mistress,  let  him  have  no  handle  against  you  ! 


"Show  him  a  mouse's  tail,  and  he  will  guess. 
With  metaphysic  swiftness,  at  the  mouse ; 
Show  him  a  garden,  and  with  speed  no  less, 
He'll  surmise  sagely  of  a  dwelling-house, 
And  plot,  in  the  same  minute,  how  to  chouse 
The  owner  out  of  it ;  show  him  a — "     "  Peace  ! 
Peace  !  nor  contrive  thy  mistress'  ire  to  rouse ;" 
Return'd  the  princess,  "  my  tongue  shall  not  cease 

Till  from  this  hated  match  I  get  a  free  release. 


VIII. 

"  Ah,  beauteous  mortal !"     "  Hush  !"  quoth  Coralline, 
*'  Really  you  must  not  talk  of  him  indeed." 
"  You  hush  !"  replied  the  mistress,  with  a  shine 
Of  anger  in  her  eyes,  enough  to  breed 
In  stouter  hearts  than  nurse's  fear  and  dread : 
'Twas  not  the  glance  itself  made  nursey  flinch, 
But  of  its  threat  she  took  the  utmost  heed  ; 
Not  liking  in  her  heart  an  hour-long  pinch, 
Or  a  sharp  needle  run  into  her  back  an  inch. 


332  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


So  she  was  silenced,  and  fair  Bellanaine, 
Writhing  her  little  body  with  ennui, 
Continued  to  lament  and  to  complain. 
That  Fate,  cross-purposing,  should  let  her  be 
Ravish 'd  away  far  from  her  dear  countree ; 
That  all  her  feelings  should  be  set  at  nought, 
In  trumping  up  this  match  so  hastily. 
With  lowland  blood ;   and  lowland  blood  she  thought 
Poison,  as  every  stanch  true-born  Imaian  ought. 


Sorely  she  grieved,  and  wetted  three  or  four 
White  Provenge  rose-leaves  with  her  faery  tears. 
But  not  for  this  cause ; — alas  !  she  had  more 
Bad  reasons  for  her  sorrow,  as  appears 
In  the  famed  memoirs  of  a  thousand  years. 
Written  by  Crafticant,  and  published 
By  Parpaglion  and  Co.,  (those  sly  compeers 
Who  raked  up  ev'ry  fact  against  the  dead,) 
In  Scarab  Street,  Panthea,  at  the  Jubal's  Head. 


XI. 

Where,  after  a  long  hypercritic  howl 
Against  the  vicious  manners  of  the  age, 
He  goes  on  to  expose,  with  heart  and  soul, 
What  vice  in  this  or  that  year  was  the  rage, 
Backbiting  all  the  world  in  ev'ry  page ; 
With  special  strictures  on  the  horrid  crime, 
(Section'd  and  subsection'd  with  learning  sage,) 
Of  faeries  stooping  on  their  wings  sublime 
To  kiss  a  mortal's  lips,  when  such  were  in  their  prime. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  333 


Turn  to  the  copious  index,  you  will  find 
Somewhere  in  the  column,  headed  letter  B, 
The  name  of  Bellanaine,  if  you're  not  blind  ; 
Then  pray  refer  to  the  text,  and  you  will  see 
An  article  made  up  of  calumny 
Against  this  highland  princess,  rating  her 
For  giving  way,  so  over  fashionably. 
To  this  new-fangled  vice,  which  seems  a  burr 
Stuck  in  his  moral  throat,  no  coughing  e'er  could  stir, 


There  he  says  plainly  that  she  loved  a  man ! 
That  she  around  him  flutter'd,  flirted,  toy'd. 
Before  her  marriage  with  great  Elfinan  ; 
That  after  marriage  too,  she  never  joy'd 
In  husband's  company,  but  still  employ'd 
Hei  wits  to  'scape  away  to  Angel-land  ; 
Where  liv'd  the  youth,  who  worried  and  annoy'd 
Her  tender  heart,  and  its  warm  ardors  fann'd 
To  such  a  dreadful  blaze,  her  side  would  scorch  her  hand. 


XIV. 

But  let  us  leave  this  idle  tittle-tattle 
To  waiting-maids,  and  bed-room  coteries, 
Nor  till  fit  time  against  her  fame  wage  battle. 
Poor  Elfinan  is  very  ill  at  ease. 
Let  us  resume  his  subject  if  you  please  : 
For  it  may  comfort  and  console  him  much, 
To  rhyme  and  syllable  his  miseries  ; 
Poor  Elfinan  !  whose  cruel  fate  was  such, 
He  sat  and  cursed  a  bride  he  knew  he  could  not  touch. 


1.5* 


334  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Soon  as  (according  to  his  promises) 
Tiie  bridal  embassy  had  taken  wing, 
And  vanish'd,  bird-like,  o'er  the  suburb  trees, 
The  emperor,  empierced  with  the  sharp  sting 
Of  love,  retired,  vex'd  and  murmuring 
Like  any  drone  shut  from  the  fair  bee-queen. 
Into  his  cabinet,  and  there  did  fling 
His  limbs  upon  the  sofa,  full  of  spleen, 
And  damn'd  his  House  of  Commons,  in  complete  chagrin. 


"  I  '11  trounce  some  of  the  members,"  cried  the  prince, 
I  '11  put  a  mark  against  some  rebel  names, 
I  '11  make  the  opposition-benches  wince, 
I  '11  show  them  very  soon,  to  all  their  shames. 
What  'tis  to  smother  up  a  prince's  flames; 
That  ministers  should  join  in  it,  I  own. 
Surprises  me  ! — they  too  at  these  high  games ! 
Am  I  an  Emperor  ?     Do  I  wear  a  crown  ? 

Imperial  Elfinan,  go  hang  thyself  or  drown  ! 


XVII. 

"  I  '11  trounce  'em  ! — there's  the  square-cut  chancelor, 

His  son  shall  never  touch  that  bishopric  ; 

And  for  the  nephew  of  old  Palfior, 

I'll  show  him  that  his  speeches  made  me  sick, 

And  give  the  colonelcy  to  Phalaric  ; 

The  tiptoe  marquis,  moral  and  gallant. 

Shall  lodge  in  shabby  taverns  upon  tick  ; 

And  for  the  Speaker's  second  cousin's  aunt. 
She  sha'n't  be  maid  of  honor, — by  heaven  that  she  sha'n't ! 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  335 


xvin. 

"  I  '11  shirk  the  Duke  of  A.  ;  I'll  cut  his  brother ; 
I  '11  give  no  garter  to  his  eldest  son  ; 
I  won't  speak  to  his  sister  or  his  mother  ! 
The  Viscount  B.  shall  live  at  cut-and-run ; 
But  how  in  the  world  can  I  contrive  to  stun 
That  fellow's  voice,  which  plagues  me  worse  than  any, 
That  stubborn  fool,  that  impudent  state-dun. 
Who  sets  down  ev'ry  sovereign  as  a  zany, — 

That  vulgar  commoner,  Esquire  Biancopany  ? 


xiz. 

*'  Monstrous  affair  !     Pshaw  !  pah  !     what  ugly  minx 
Will  they  fetch  from  Imaus  for  my  bride  ? 
Alas  !  my  wearied  heart  within  me  sinks. 
To  think  that  I  must  be  so  near  allied 
To  a  cold  dullard  fay, — ah,  woe  betide ! 
Ah,  fairest  of  all  human  loveliness ! 
Sweet  Bertha !  what  crime  can  it  be  to  glide 
About  the  fragrant  plaitings  of  thy  dress, 

Or  kiss  thine  eye,  or  count  thy  locks,  tress  after  tress?" 


So  said,  one  minute's  while  his  eyes  remain'd 
Half  lidded,  piteous,  languid,  innocent ; 
But,  in  a  wink,  their  splendor  they  regain'd, 
Sparkling  revenge  with  amorous  fury  blent. 
Love  thwarted  in  bad  temper  oft  has  vent : 
He  rose,  he  stampt  his  foot,  he  rang  the  bell, 
And  order'd  some  death-warrants  to  be  sent 
For  signature : — somewhere  the  tempest  fell, 
As  many  a  poor  fellow  does  not  live  to  tell. 


336  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


XXI. 

"At  the  same  time,  Eban," — (this  was  his  page, 
A  fay  of  color,  slave  from  top  to  toe, 
Sent  as  a  present,  while  yet  under  age. 
From  the  Viceroy  of  Zanguebar, — wise,  slow, 
His  speech,  his  only  words  were  "yes"  and  "no,' 
But  swift  of  look,  and  foot,  and  wing  was  he,) — 

"  At  the  same  time,  Eban,  this  instant  go 

To  Hum  the  soothsayer,  whose  name  I  see 
Among  the  fresh  arrivals  in  our  empery. 


XXII. 

"  Bring  Hum  to  me  !     But  stay — here  take  my  ring. 
The  pledge  of  favor,  that  he  not  suspect 
Any  foul  play,  or  awkward  murdering, 
Tho'  I  have  bowstrung  many  of  his  sect ; 
Throw  in  a  hint,  that  if  he  should  neglect 
One  hour,  the  next  shall  see  him  in  my  grasp, 
And  the  next  after  that  shall  see  him  neck'd, 
Or  swallow'd  by  my  hunger-starved  asp, — 
And  mention  ('tis  as  well)  the  torture  of  the  wasp." 


These  orders  given,  the  Prince,  in  half  a  pet, 
Let  o'er  the  silk  his  propping  elbow  slide. 
Caught  up  his  little  legs,  and,  in  a  fret, 
Fell  on  the  sofa  on  his  royal  side. 
The  slave  retreated  backwards,  humble-eyed, 
And  with  a  slave-like  silence  closed  the  door, 
And  to  old  Hum  thro'  street  and  alley  hied ; 
He  "  knew  the  city,"  as  we  say,  of  yore. 
And  for  short  cuts  and  turns,  was  nobody  knew  more- 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  337 


It  was  the  time  when  wliolesale  dealers  close 
Their  shutters  with  a  moody  sense  of  wealth, 
But  retail  dealers,  diligent,  let  loose 
The  gas  (objected  to  on  score  of  health), 
Convey'd  in  little  solder'd  pipes  by  stealth. 
And  make  it  flare  in  many  a  brilliant  form, 
That  all  the  powers  of  darkness  it  repell'th, 
Which  to  the  oil-trade  doth  great  scaith  and  harm, 
And  supersedeth  quite  the  use  of  the  glow-worm. 


XXV. 

Eban,  untempted  by  the  pastry-cooks, 
(Of  pastry  he  got  store  within  the  palace,) 
With  hasty  steps,  wrapp'd  cloak,  and  solemn  looks, 
Incognito  upon  his  errand  sallies, 
His  smelling-bottle  ready  for  the  allies ; 
He  pass'd  the  hurdy-gurdies  with  disdain, 
Vowing  he  'd  have  them  sent  on  board  the  gallies ; 
Just  as  he  made  his  vow,  it  'gan  to  rain, 
Therefore  he  call'd  a  coach,  and  bade  it  drive  amain. 


XXVI. 

"  I  '11  pull  the  string,"  said  he,  and  further  said, 
"  Polluted  jarvey  !     Ah,  thou  filthy  hack  ! 
Whose  springs  of  life  are  all  dried  up  and  dead, 
Whose  linsey-woolsey  lining  hangs  all  slack. 
Whose  rug  is  straw,  whose  wholeness  is  a  orack  ; 
And  evermore  thy  steps  go  clatter-clitter ; 
Whose  glass  once  up  can  never  be  got  back. 
Who  prov'st,  with  jolting  arguments  and  bitter, 
That  'tis  of  modern  use  to  travel  in  a  litter. 


338  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


"  Thou  inconvenience  !  thou  hungry  crop 
For  all  corn !  thou  snail-creeper  to  and  fro, 
Who  while  thou  goest  ever  seem'st  to  stop, 
And  fiddle-faddle  standest  while  you  go; 
I'  the  morning,  freighted  with  a  weight  of  woe. 
Unto  some  lazar-house  thou  journeyest. 
And  in  the  evening  tak'st  a  double  row 
Of  dowdies,  for  some  dance  or  party  drest, 
Besides  the  goods  meanwhile  thou  movest  east  and  west. 


XXVIII. 

"  By  thy  ungallant  bearing  and  sad  mien, 
An  inch  appears  the  utmost  thou  couldst  budge : 
Yet  at  the  slightest  nod,  or  hint,  or  sign. 
Round  to  the  curb-stone  patient  dost  thou  trudge, 
School'd  in  a  beckon,  learned  in  a  nudge, 
A  dull-eyed  Argus  watching  for  a  fare ; 
Quiet  and  plodding  thou  dost  bear  no  grudge 
To  whisking  tilburies,  or  phaetons  rare. 

Curricles,  or  mail-coaches,  swift  beyond  compare." 


Philosophizing  thus,  he  pull'd  the  check, 
And  bade  the  coachman  wheel  to  such  a  street, 
Who  turning  much  his  body,  more  his  neck, 
Louted  full  low,  and  hoarsely  did  him  greet : 

"  Certes,  Monsieur  were  best  take  to  his  feet, 
Seeing  his  servant  can  no  farther  drive 
For  press  of  coaches,  that  to-night  here  meet, 
Many  as  bees  about  a  straw-capp'd  hive, 

When  first  for  April  honey  into  faint  flowers  they  dive. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  339 


Eban  then  paid  his  fare,  and  tiptoe  went 
To  Hum's  hotel ;  and,  as  he  on  did  pass 
With  head  inclin'd,  each  dusky  lineament 
Show'd  in  the  pearl-paved  street  as  in  a  glass ; 
His  purple  vest,  that  ever  peeping  was 
Rich  from  the  fluttering  crimson  of  his  cloak, 
His  silvery  trowsers,  and  his  silken  sash 
Tied  in  a  burnish'd  knot,  their  semblance  took 
Upon  the  mirror'd  walls,  wherever  he  might  look. 


He  smiled  at  self,  and,  smiling,  show'd  his  teeth. 
And  seeing  his  white  teeth,  he  smiled  the  more ; 
Lifted  his  eyebrows,  spurn'd  the  path  beneath, 
Show'd  teeth  again,  and  smiled  as  heretofore. 
Until  he  knock'd  at  the  magician's  door  ; 
Where,  till  the  porter  answer'd,  might  be  seen. 
In  the  clear  panel  more  he  could  adore, — 
His  turban  wreath'd  of  gold,  and  white,  and  green, 
Mustachios,  ear-ring,  nose-ring,  and  his  sabre  keen. 


XXXII. 

"  Does  not  your  master  give  a  rout  to-night  ?" 
Quoth  the  dark  page  ;  "  Oh,  no  !"  return'd  the  Swiss, 

"  Next  door  but  one  to  us,  upon  the  right, 
The  Magazin  des  Modes  now  open  is 
Against  the  Emperor's  wedding  ; — and  sir,  this 
My  master  finds  a  monstrous  horrid  bore  ; 
As  he  retir'd,  an  hour  ago  I  wis. 
With  his  best  beard  and  brimstone,  to  explore 

And  cast  a  quiet  figure  in  his  second  floor. 


340  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


XXXIII. 

*'  Gad  !  he  's  obliged  to  stick  to  business  ! 
For  clialk,  I  hear,  stands  at  a  pretty  price  ; 
And  as  for  aqua  vita^ — there  's  a  mess !  "^ 
The  denies  sapienticc  of  mice 
Our  barber  tells  me  too  are  on  the  rise, — 
Tinder  's  a  lighter  article, — nitre  pure 
Goes  off  like  lightning, — grains  of  Paradise 
At  an  enormous  figure  ! — stars  not  sure  ! — 

Zodiac  will  not  move  without  a  slight  douceur  ! 


XXXIV. 

"  Venus  won't  stir  a  peg  without  a  fee. 

And  master  is  too  partial  entre  nous 

To — "     "  Hush — hush  !"  cried  Eban,  "  sure  that  is  he 

Coming  down  stairs, — by  St.  Bartholomew  ! 

As  backwards  as  he  can, — is  't  something  new  ? 

Or  is  't  his  custom,  in  the  name  of  fun  ?" 
"  He  always  comes  down  backward,  with  one  shoe  " — 

Return'd  the  porter — "  off,  and  one  shoe  on. 
Like,  saving  shoe  for  sock  or  stocking,  my  man  John !" 


It  was  indeed  the  great  Magician, 

Feeling,  with  careful  toe,  for  every  stair. 

And  retrograding  careful  as  he  can, 

Backwards  and  downwards  from  his  own  two  pair : 
"  Salpietro  !"  exclaimed  Hum,  "  is  the  dog  there  ? 

He  's  always  in  my  way  upon  the  mat !" 
"  He  's  in  the  kitchen,  or  the  Lord  knows  where," — 

Replied  the  Swiss, — "  the  nasty,  whelping  brat !" 
"  Don't  beat  him  !"  return'd  Hum,  and  on  the  floor  came  pat. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  341 


Then  facing  right  about,  he  saw  the  Page, 
And  said  :  "  Don't  tell  me  what  you  want,  Eban  ; 
The  Emperor  is  now  in  a  huge  rage, — 
'Tis  nine  to  one  he  '11  give  you  the  rattan  ! 
Let  us  away  !"     Away  together  ran 
The  plain-dress'd  sage  and  spangled  blackamoor, 
Nor  rested  till  they  stood  to  cool,  and  fan. 
And  breathe  themselves  at  th'  Emperor's  chamber  door, 
When  Eban  thought  he  heard  a  soft  imperial  snore. 


"  I  thought  you  guess'd,  foretold,  or  prophesied. 
That  's  Majesty  was  in  a  raving  fit." 

"  He  dreams,"  said  Hum,  "  or  I  have  ever  lied. 
That  he  is  tearing  you,  sir,  bit  by  bit." 

"  He  's  not  asleep,  and  you  have  little  wit," 
Replied  the  Page,  "  that  little  buzzing  noise, 
Whate'er  your  palmistry  may  make  of  it, 
Comes  from  a  plaything  of  the  Emperor's  choice, 

From  a  Man-Tiger-Organ,  prettiest  of  his  toys." 


XXXVIII. 

Eban  then  usher'd  in  the  learned  Seer : 
Elfinan's  back  was  turn'd,  but,  ne'ertheless, 
Both,  prostrate  on  the  carpet,  ear  by  ear. 
Crept  silently,  and  waited  in  distress. 
Knowing  the  Emperor's  moody  bitterness ; 
Eban  especially,  who  on  the  floor  'gan 
Tremble  and  quake  to  death, — he  feared  less 
A  dose  of  senna-tea,  or  nightmare  Gorgon, 
Than  the  Emperor  when  he  play'don  his  Man-Tiger-Organ. 


342  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


They  kiss'd  nine  times  the  carpet's  velvet  face 
Of  glossy  silk,  soft,  smooth,  and  meadow-green, 
Where  the  close  eye  in  deep  rich  fur  might  trace 
A  silver  tissue,  scantly  to  be  seen, 
As  daisies  lurk'd  in  June-grass,  buds  in  green ; 
Sudden  the  music  ceased,  sudden  the  hand 
Of  majesty,  by  dint  of  passion  keen. 
Doubled  into  a  common  fist,  went  grand, 
And  knock'd  down  three  cut  glasses,  and  his  best  ink-stand. 


XL. 

Then  turning  round,  he  saw  those  trembling  two  : 
"  Eban,"  said  he,  "  as  slaves  should  taste  the  fruits 
Of  diligence,  I  shall  remember  you 
To-morrow,  or  next  day,  as  time  suits, 
In  a  finger  conversation  with  my  mutes, — 
Begone  ! — for  you,  Chaldean  !  here  remain  ; 
Fear  not,  quake  not,  and  as  good  wine  recruits 
A  conjurer's  spirits,  what  cup  will  you  drain  ? 
Shei'ry  in  silver,  hock  in  gold,  or  glass'd  champagne  ?" 


XLt. 

"  Commander  of  the  faithful !"  answer'd  Hum, 
"  In  preference  to  these,  I'll  merely  taste 

A  thimble-full  of  old  Jamaica  rum." 
"  A  simple  boon  !"  said  Elfinan,  "  thou  may'st 

Have  Nantz,  with  which  my  morning-coffee's  laced."* 
"  I'll  have  a  glass  of  Nantz,  then," — said  the  Seer, — 
"  Made  racy — (sure  my  boldness  is  misplaced  !) — 

With  the  third  part — (yet  that  is  drinking  dear!) — 
Of  the  least  drop  of  creme  de  citron  crystal  clear." 

*  "  Mr.  Nisby  is  of  opinion  that  laced  coffee  is  bad  for  the  head." — Spectator. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  343 


XLII. 

"  I  pledge  you,  Hum  !  and  pledge  my  dearest  love, 
My  Bertha !"  "  Bertha  !  Bertha  !"  cried  the  sage, 

"  I  know  a  many  Berthas  !"     "  Mine  's  above 
All  Berthas  !"  sighed  the  Emperor.     "  I  engage," 
Said  Hum,  "  in  duty,  and  in  vassalage, 
To  mention  all  the  Berthas  in  the  earth  ; — 
There  's  Bertha  Watson, — and  Miss  Bertha  Page, — 
This  famed  for  languid  eyes,  and  that  for  mirth, — 

There 's  Bertha  Blount  of  York,— and  Bertha  Knox  of  Perth." 


XLIII. 

"  You  seem  to  know  " — "  I  do  know,"  answer'd  Hum, 

"  Your  Majesty  's  in  love  with  some  fine  girl 
Named  Bertha  ;  but  her  surname  will  not  come. 
Without  a  little  conjuring."     "  'Tis  Pearl, 
'Tis  Bertha  Pearl !     What  makes  my  brains  so  whirl  ? 
And  she  is  softer,  fairer  than  her  name !" 

"  Where  does  she  live  ?"  ask'd  Hum.     "  Her  fair  locks  curl 
So  brightly,  they  put  all  our  fays  to  shame  ! — 

Live — O  !  at  Canterbury,  with  her  old  granddame. " 


XLIV. 

"  Good  !  good  I"  cried  Hum,  "  I've  known  her  from  a  child  ! 

She  is  a  changeling  of  my  management ; 

She  was  born  at  midnight  in  an  Indian  wild  ; 

Her  mother's  screams  with  the  striped  tiger's  blent, 

While  the  torch-bearing  slaves  a  halloo  sent 

Into  the  jungles ;  and  her  palanquin. 

Rested  amid  the  desert's  dreariment, 

Shook  with  her  agony,  till  fair  were  seen 
The  little  Bertha's  eyes  ope  on  the  stars  serene." 


344  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


XLV. 

"  I  can't  say,"  said  the  monarch,  "  that  may  be 
Just  as  it  happen'd,  true  or  else  a  bam  ! 
Drink  up  your  brandy,  and  sit  down  by  me, 
Feel,  feel  my  pulse,  how  much  in  love  1  am  ; 
And  if  your  science  is  not  all  a  sham, 
Tell  me  some  means  to  get  the  lady  here." 
"  Upon  my  honor !"  said  the  son  of  Cham,* 
"  She  is  my  dainty  changeling,  near  and  dear. 
Although  her  story  sounds  at  first  a  little  queer." 

XL  VI. 

"  Convey  her  to  me.  Hum,  or  by  my  crown, 
My  sceptre,  and  my  cross-surmounted  globe, 
I'll  knock  you — "     "  Does  your  majesty  mean — doimi  ? 
No,  no,  you  never  could  my  feelings  probe 
To  such  a  depth  !"     The  Emperor  took  his  robe, 
And  wept  upon  its  purple  palatine. 
While  Hum  continued,  shamming  half  a  sob, — 

"  In  Canterbury  doth  your  lady  shine  ? 

But  let  me  cool  your  brandy  with  a  little  wine." 


XLVII. 

Whereat  a  narrow  Flemish  glass  he  took. 

That  since  belong'd  to  Admiral  Dc  Witt, 

Admired  it  with  connoisseuring  look, 

And  with  the  ripest  claret  crowned  it. 

And,  ere  the  lively  head  could  burst  and  flit, 

He  turn'd  it  quickly,  nimbly  upside  down, 

His  mouth  being  held  conveniently  fit 

To  catch  the  treasure  :  "  Best  in  all  the  town  !" 

He  said,  smack'd  his  moist  lips,  and  gave  a  pleasant  frown. 

*  Chain  is  said   to  have   been   the   inventor  of  magic.     Lucy  learnt   this 
from  Bayle's  Dictionary,  and  had  copied  a  long  Latin  note  from  that  work. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  345 


"  Ah  !  good  my  Prince,  weep  not !"     And  then  again 

He  fill'd  a  bumper.     "  Great  sire,  do  not  weep  ! 

Your  pulse  is  shocking,  but  I'll  ease  your  pain." 
"  Fetch  me  that  Ottoman,  and  prithee  keep 

Your  voice  low,"  said  the  Emperor,  "  and  steep 

Some  lady's  fingers  nice  in  Candy  wine  ; 

And  prithee,  Hum,  behind  the  screen  do  peep 

For  the  rose-water  vase,  magician  mine  ! 
And  sponge  my  forehead — so  my  love  doth  make  me  pine. 


XLIX. 

"  Ah,  cursed  Bellanaine  !"     "  Don't  think  of  her,' 
Rejoin'd  the  Mago,  "  but  on  Bertha  muse  ; 
For,  by  my  choicest  best  barometer. 
You  shall  not  throttled  be  in  marriage  noose  ; 
I've  said  it,  sire  ;  you  only  have  to  choose 
Bertha  or  Bellanaine."     So  saying,  he  drew 
From  the  left  pocket  of  his  threadbare  hose, 
A  sampler  hoarded  slyly,  good  as  new. 

Holding  it  by  his  thumb  and  finger  full  in  view. 


"  Sire,  this  is  Bertha  Pearl's  neat  handy-work, 
Her  name,  see  here,  Midsummer,  ninety-one." 
Elfinan  snatch'd  it  with  a  sudden  jerk, 
And  wept  as  if  he  never  would  have  done, 
Honoring  with  royal  tears  the  poor  homespun  ; 
Whereon  were  broider'd  tigers  with  black  eyes, 
And  long-tailed  pheasants,  and  a  rising  sun. 
Plenty  of  posies,  great  stags,  butterflies 

Bigger  than  stags — a  moon — with  other  mysteries. 


346  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


LI. 

The  monarch  handled  o'er  and  o'er  again 
These  day-school  hieroglyphics  with  a  sigh  ; 
Somewhat  in  sadness,  but  pleas'd  in  the  main, 
Till  this  oracular  couplet  met  his  eye 
Astounded — Cupid,  I  do  thee  defy  ! 
It  was  too  much.     He  shrunk  back  in  his  chair, 
Grew  pale  as  death,  and  fainted — very  nigh  ! 
Pho  !  nonsense  !"  exclaim'd  Hum,  "  now  don't  despair 
She  does  not  mean  it  really.     Cheer  up,  hearty — there  ! 


"  And  listen  to  my  words.     You  say  you  won't. 
On  any  terms,  marry  Miss  Bellanaine  ; 
It  goes  against  your  conscience — good  !     Well,  don't. 
You  say,  you  love  a  mortal.     I  would  fain 
Persuade  your  honor's  highness  to  refrain 
From  peccadilloes.     But,  sire,  as  I  say, 
What  good  would  that  do  ?     And,  to  be  more  plain, 
You  would  do  me  a  mischief  some  odd  day, 

Cut  off  my  ears  and  hands,  or  head  too,  by  my  fay  ! 


LIII. 

"  Besides,  manners  forbid  that  I  should  pass  any 
Vile  strictures  on  the  conduct  of  a  prince 
Who  should  indulge  his  genius,  if  he  has  any. 
Not,  like  a  subject,  foolish  matters  mince. 
Now  I  think  on't,  perhaps  I  could  convince 
Your  majesty  there  is  no  crime  at  all 
In  loving  pretty  little  Bertha,  since 
She  's  very  delicate — not  over  tall, — 

A  fairy's  hand,  and  in  the  waist  why — very  small. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  347 


LIV. 

"  Ring  the  repeater,  gentle  Hum  !"     "  'Tis  five," 
Said  gentle  Hum  ;  "  the  nights  draw  in  apace  ; 
The  little  birds  I  hear  are  all  alive  ; 
I  see  the  dawning  toueh'd  upon  your  face  ; 
Shall  I  put  out  the  candles,  please  your  Grace  ?" 
"  Do  put  them  out,  and,  without  more  ado, 
Tell  me  how  I  may  that  sweet  girl  embrace, — 
How  you  can  bring  her  to  me."     "  That's  for  you, 

Great  Emperor  !  to  adventure,  like  a  lover  true." 


LV. 

"  1  fetch  her  !" — "  Yes,  an't  like  your  majesty  ; 
And  as  she  would  be  frighten'd  wide  awake, 
To  travel  such  a  distance  through  the  sky, 
Use  of  some  soft  manoeuvre  you  must  make, 
For  your  convenience,  and  her  dear  nerves'  sake  ; 
Nice  way  would  be  to  bring  her  in  a  swoon. 
Anon,  I'll  tell  what  course  were  best  to  take  ; 
You  must  away  this  morning."     "  Hum  !  so  soon  ?" 

"  Sire,  you  must  be  in  Kent  by  twelve  o'clock  at  noon.' 


LVI. 

At  this  great  Caesar  started  on  his  feet, 
Lifted  his  wings,  and  stood  attentive- wise. 
"Those  wings  to  Canterbury  you  must  beat. 
If  you  hold  Bertha  as  a  worthy  prize. 
Look  in  the  Almanack — Moore  never  lies — 
April  the  twenty-fourth — this  coming  day. 
Now  breathing  its  new  bloom  upon  the  skies. 
Will  end  in  St.  Mark's  eve  ; — you  must  away. 
For  on  that  eve  alone  can  you  the  maid  convey." 


348  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Then  the  magician  solemnly  'gan  to  frown, 
So  that  his  frost-white  eyebrows,  beetling  low, 
Shaded  his  deep  green  eyes,  and  wrinkles  brown 
Plaited  upon  his  furnace-scorched  brow  : 
Forth  from  his  hood  that  hung  his  neck  below. 
He  lifted  a  bright  casket  of  pure  gold, 
Touch'd  a  spring-lock,  and  there  in  wool  or  snow, 
Charm'd  into  ever  freezing,  lay  an  old 
And  legend-leaved  book,  mysterious  to  behold. 


LVIII. 

"  Take  this  same  book — it  wall  not  bite  you,  sire  ; 
There,  put  it  underneath  your  royal  arm  ; 
Though  it 's  a  pretty  weight,  it  will  not  tire, 
But  rather  on  your  journey  keep  you  warm  : 
This  is  the  magic,  this  the  potent  charm, 
That  shall  drive  Bertha  to  a  fainting  fit ! 
When  the  time  comes,  don't  feel  the  least  alarm, 
But  lift  her  from  the  ground,  and  swiftly  flit 

Back  to  your  palace.  +  *  * 


"  What  shall  I  do  with  that  same  book  ?"    "  Why  merely 
Lay  it  on  Bertha's  table,  close  beside 
Her  work-box,  and  'twill  help  your  purpose  dearly  ; 
I  say  no  more."     "  Or  good  or  ill  betide. 
Through  the  wide  air  to  Kent  this  morn  I  glide !" 
Exclaimed  the  Emperor,  "  When  I  return. 
Ask  what  you  will, — I'll  give  you  my  new  bride  ! 
And  take  some  more  wine.  Hum  ; — O,  Heavens  !  I  burn 

To  be  upon  the  wing  !     Now,  now,  that  minx  I  spurn !" 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  349 


"  Leave  her  to  me,"  rejoin'd  the  magian : 
"  But  how  shall  I  account,  illustrious  fay ! 
For  thine  imperial  absence  ?     Pho  !  I  can 
Say  you  are  very  sick,  and  bar  the  way 
To  your  so  loving  courtiers  for  one  day  ; 
If  either  of  their  two  Archbishops'  graces 
Should  talk  of  extreme  unction,  I  shall  say 
You  do  not  like  cold  pig  with  Latin  phrases, 
Which  never  should  be  used  but  in  alarming  cases. 


LXI. 

"  Open  the  window,  Hum  ;  I'm  ready  now  !" 

"  Zooks  !"  exclaim'd  Hum,  as  up  the  sash  he  drew, 

"  Behold,  your  majesty,  upon  the  brow 
Of  yonder  hill,  what  crowds  of  people  !"     "  Where  ? 
The  monster  's  always  after  something  new," 
Return'd  his  highness,  *'  they  are  piping  hot 
To  see  my  pigsney  Bellanaine.     Hum  !  do 
Tighten  my  belt  a  little, — so,  so, — not 

Too  tight, — the  book  ! — my  wand  ! — so,  nothing  is  forgot." 


LXU. 

"  Wounds  !  how  they  shout !"  said  Hum,  "  and  there, — see, 
see, 

Th'  ambassador  's  return'd  from  Pigmio ! 

The  morning 's  very  fine, — uncommonly  ! 

See,  past  the  skirts  of  yon  white  cloud  they  go, 

Tinging  it  with  soft  crimsons  !     Now  below 

The  sable-pointed  heads  of  firs  and  pines 

They  dip,  move  on,  and  with  them  moves  a  glow 

Along  the  forest  side  !     Now  amber  lines 
Reach  the  hill  top,  and  now  throughout  the  valley  shines." 

16 


350  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


"  Why,  Hum,  you  're  getting  quite  poetical ! 

Those  nows  you  managed  in  a  special  style." 
"If  ever  you  have  leisure,  sire,  you  shall 
See  scraps  of  mine  will  make  it  worth  your  while, 
Tit-bits  for  Phoebus  ! — yes,  you  well  may  smile. 
Hark  !  hark  !  the  bells  !"     "  A  little  further  yet, 
Good  Hum,  and  let  me  view  this  mighty  coil." 
Then  the  great  Emperor  full  graceful  set 
His  elbow  for  a  prop,  and  snufi'd  his  mignionette. 


The  morn  is  full  of  holiday  :  loud  bells 
With  rival  clamors  ring  from  every  spire  ; 
Cunningly-stationed  music  dies  and  swells 
In  echoing  places  ;  when  the  winds  respire, 
Light  flags  stream  out  like  gauzy  tongues  of  fire  ; 
A  metropolitan  murmur,  lifeful,  warm, 
Comes  from  the  northern  suburbs  ;  rich  attire 
Freckles  with  red  and  gold  the  moving  swarm  ; 
While  here  and  there  clear  trumpets  blow  a  keen  alarm. 


LXV. 

And  now  the  fairy  escort  was  seen  clear. 
Like  the  old  pageant  of  Aurora's  train, 
Above  a  pearl-built  minster,  hovering  near ; 
First  wily  Crafticant,  the  chamberlain. 
Balanced  upon  his  gray-grown  pinions  twain, 
His  slender  wand  officially  reveal'd  ; 
Then  black  gnomes  scattering  sixpences  like  rain ; 
Then  pages  three  and  three  ;  and  next,  slave-held, 
The  Imaian  'scutcheon  bright, — one  mouse  in  argent  field. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  351 


Gentlemen  pensioners  next ;  and  after  them, 
A  troop  of  winged  Janizaries  flew  ; 
Then  shives,  as  presents  bearing  many  a  gem  ; 
Then  twelve  physicians  fluttering  two  and  two ; 
And  next  a  chaplain  in  a  cassock  new ; 
Then  Lords  in  waiting  ;  then  (what  head  not  reels 
For  pleasure  ?) — the  fair  Princess  in  full  view, 
Borne  upon  wings, — and  very  pleased  she  feels 
To  have  such  splendor  dance  attendance  at  her  heels. 


For  there  was  more  magnificence  behind : 
She  waved  her  handkerchief.     "  Ah,  very  grand  !" 
Cried  Elfinan,  and  closed  the  window-blind  : 
"  And,  Hum,  we  must  not  shilly-shally  stand, — 
Adieu  !  adieu  !  I'm  olT  for  Angle-land  ! 
I  say,  old  Hocus,  have  you  such  a  thing 
About  you, — feel  your  pockets,  I  command, — 
I  want,  this  instant,  an  invisible  ring, — 
Tiiank  you,  old  mummy  ! — now  securely  T  take  wing." 


LXVIII. 

Then  Elfinan  swift  vaulted  from  the  floor, 
And  lighted  graceful  on  the  window-sill ; 
Under  one  arm  the    magic  book  he  bore, 
The  other  he  could  wave  about  at  will ; 
Pale  was  his  face,   he  still  look'd  very  ill : 
He  bow'd  at  Bellanaine,  and  said — "  Poor  Bell ! 
Farewell !  farewell  !  and  if  for  ever  !  still 
For  ever  fare  thee  well !" — and  then  he  fell 
A  laughing  ! — snapp'd  his  fingers  ! — shame  it  is  to  tell  l^ 


352  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


"  By  'r  Lady  !  he  is  gone  !"  cries  Hum,  "  and  I,- 

(I  own  it,) — have  made  too  free  with  his  wine ; 

Old  Crafiicant  will  smoke  me,  by-lhe-bye ! 

This  room  is  full  of  jewels  as  a  mine, — 

Dear  valuable  creatures,  how  ye  shine  ! 

Some  time  to-day  I  must  contrive  a  minute, 

If  Mercury  propitiously  incline, 

To  examine  his  scrutoire,  and  see  what 's  in  it, 
For  of  superfluous  diamonds  I  as  well  may  thin  it. 


"  The  Emperor's  horrid  bad  ;  yes,  that 's  my  cue  !" 
Some  histories  say  that  this  was  Hum's  last  speech  ; 
That,  being  fuddled,  he  went  reeling  through 
The  corridor,  and  scarce  upright  could  reach 
The  stair-head  ;   that  being  glutted  as  a  leach. 
And  used,  as  we  ourselves  have  just  now  said, 
To  manage  stairs  reversely,  like  a  peach 
Too  ripe,  he  fell,  being  puzzled  in  his  head 

With  liquor  and  the  staircase  :  verdict— ^ound  stone  dead. 


This,  as  a  falsehood,  Crafticanto  treats  ; 
And  as  his  style  is  of  strange  elegance, 
Gentle  and  tender,  full  of  soft  conceits, 
(Much  like  our  Boswell's,)  we  will  take  a  glance 
At  his  sweet  prose,  and,  if  we  can,  make  dance 
His  woven  periods  into  careless  rhyme ; 
O,  little  faery  Pegasus  !   rear — prance — 
Trot  round  the  quarto — ordinary  time  ! 
March,  little  Pegasus,  with  pawing  hoof  sublime ! 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  353 


LXXII. 

Well,  let  us  see, — tenth  hook  and  chapter  nine, — 
Thus  Crafticant  pursues  his  diary  : — 
'Twas  twelve  o'clock  at  night,  the  weather  fine, 
Latitude  thirty-six  ;   our  scouts  descry 
A  flight  of  starlings  making  rapidly 
Tow'rds  Thibet.     Mem. : — birds  fly  in  the  night ; 
From  twelve  to  half-past — wings  not  fit  to  fly 
For  a  thick  fog — the  Princess  sulky  quite : 
Call'd  for  an  extra  shawl,  and  gave  her  nurse  a  bite. 


Five  minutes  before  one — brought  down  a  moth 
With  my  new  double-bari'el — stew'd  the  thighs, 
And  made  a  very  tolerable  broth — 
Princess  turn'd  dainty,  to  our  great  surprise, 
Alter'd  her  mind,  and  thought  it  very  nice  : 
Seeing  her  pleasant,  tried  her  with  a  pun, 
She  frown'd  ;  a  monstrous  owl  across  us  flies 
About  this  time, — a  sad  old  figure  of  fun  ; 
Bad  omen — this  new  match  can't  be  a  happy  one. 


LXXIV. 

From  two  to  half-past,  dusky  way  we  made. 
Above  the  plains  of  Gobi, — desert,  bleak  ; 
Beheld  afar  off",  in  the  hooded  shade 
Of  darkness,  a  great  mountain  (strange  to  speak), 
Spitting,  from  forth  its  sulphur-baken  peak, 
A  fan-shaped  burst  of  blood-red,  arrowy  fire, 
Turban'd  with  smoke,  which  still  away  did  reek. 
Solid  and  black  from  that  eternal  pyre. 
Upon  the  laden  winds  that  scantly  could  respire. 


354  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Just  upon  three  o'clock,  a  falling  star 
Created  an  alarm  among  our  troop, 
Kill'd  a  man-cook,  a  page,  and  broke  a  jar, 
A  tureen,  and  three  dishes,  at  one  swoop. 
Then  passing  by  the  Princess,  singed  her  hoop  : 
Could  not  conceive  what  Coralline  was  at. 
She  clapp'd  her  hands  three  times,  and  cried  out  "  Whoop !" 
Some  strange  Imaian  custom.     A  large  bat 
Came  sudden  'fore  my  face,  and  brush'd  against  my  hat. 


Five  minutes  thirteen  seconds  after  three, 
Far  in  the  west  a  mighty  fire  broke  out, 
Conjectured,  on  the  instant,  it  might  be 
The  city  of  Balk — 'twas  Balk  beyond  all  doubt : 
A  griffin,  wheeling  here  and  there  about. 
Kept  reconnoitering  us — doubled  our  guard — 
Lighted  our  torches,  and  kept  up  a  shout. 
Till  he  sheer'd  off — the  Princess  very  scared — 
And  many  on  their  marrow-bones  for  death  prepared. 


LXXVII. 

At  half-past  three  arose  the  cheerful  moon — 
Bivouac'd  for  four  minutes  on  a  cloud — 
Where  from  the  earth  we  heard  a  lively  tune 
Of  tamborines  and  pipes,  serene  and  loud, 
While  on  a  flowery  lawn  a  brilliant  crowd 
Cinque-parted  danced,  some  half  asleep  reposed 
Beneath  the  green-fan'd  cedars,  some  did  shroud 
In  silken  tents,  and  'mid  light  fragrance  dozed. 
Or  on  the  open  turf  their  soothed  eyelids  closed. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  355 


Dropp'd  my  gold  watch,  and  kill'd  a  kettle-drum- 
It  went  for  apoplexy — foolish  folks  ! — 
Left  it  to  pay  the  piper — a  good  sum — 
(I've  got  a  conscience,  maugre  people's  jokes,) 
To  scrape  a  little  favor  ;   'gan  to  coax 
Her  Highness'  pug-dog — got  a  sharp  rebuff — 
She  wish'd  a  game  at  whist — made  three  revokes- 
Turn'd  from  myself,  her  partner,  in  a  huff; 
His  Majesty  will  know  her  temper  time  enough. 


She  cried  for  chess — I  play'd  a  game  with  her- 
Castled  her  king  with  such  a  vixen  look. 
It  bodes  ill  to  his  Majesty — (refer 
To  the  second  chapter  of  my  fortieth  book. 
And  see  what  hoity-toity  airs  she  took :) 
At  half-past  four  the  morn  essay'd  to  beam — 
Saluted,  as  we  pass'd,  an  early  rook — 
The  Princess  fell  asleep,  and,  in  her  dream, 
Talk'd  of  one  Master  Hubert,  deep  in  her  esteem. 


About  this  time — making  delightful  way — 
Shed  a  quill-feather  from  my  larboard  wing — 
Wish'd,  trusted,  hoped  'twas  no  sign  of  decay — 
Thank  Heaven,  I'm  hearty  yet ! — 'twas  no  such  thing 
At  five  the  golden  light  began  to  spring. 
With  fiery  shudder  through  the  bloomed  east ; 
At  six  we  heard  Panthea's  churches  ring — 
The  city  all  his  unhived  swarms  had  cast, 
To  watch  our  grand  approach,  and  hail  us  as  we  pass'd. 


356  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


LXXXl. 

As  flowers  turn  their  faces  to  the  sun, 
So  on  our  flight  with  hungry  eyes  they  gaze, 
And,  as  we  shap'd  our  course,  this,  that  way  run. 
With  mad-cap  pleasure,  or  hand-clasp'd  amaze  : 
Sweet  in  the  air  a  mild-toned  music  plays, 
And  progresses  through  its  own  labyrinth  ; 
Buds  gather'd  from  the  green  spring's  middle-days. 
They  scatter'd — daisy,  primrose,  hyacinth — 
Or  round  white  columns  wreath'd  from  capital  to  plinth. 


Lxxxn. 

Onward  we  floated  o'er  the  panting  streets, 
That  seem'd  throughout  with  upheld  faces  paved  ; 
Look  where  we  will,  our  bird's-eye  vision  meets 
Legions  of  holiday  ;  bright  standards  waved, 
And  fluttering  ensigns  emulously  craved 
Our  minute's  glance  ;  a  busy  thunderous  roar. 
From  square  to  square,  among  the  buildings  raved. 
As  when  the  sea,  at  flow,  gluts  up  once  more 
The  craggy  hollowness  of  a  wild-reefed  shore. " 


LXXXIII. 

And  "  Bellanaine  for  ever  !"  shouted  they  ! 
While  that  fair  Princess,  from  her  winged  chair, 
Bow'd  low  with  high  demeanor,  and,  to  pay 
Their  new-blown  loyalty  with  guerdon  fair, 
Still  emptied,  at  meet  distance,  here  and  there, 
A  plenty  horn  of  jewels.     And  here  I 
( Who  wish  to  give  the  devil  her  due)  declare 
Against  that  ugly  piece  of  calumny, 
Which  calls  them  Highland  pebble-stones  not  worth  a  fly. 


THE  CAP  AND  BELLS.  357 


Still  "  Bellanaine !""  they  shouted,  while  we  glide 
'Slant  to  a  light  Ionic  portico, 
The  city's  delicacy,  and  the  pride 
Of  our  Imperial  Basilic  ;  a  row 
Of  lords  and  ladies,  on  each  hand,  make  show 
Submissive  of  knee-bent  obeisance, 
All  down  the  steps  ;  and,  as  we  enter'd,  lo  ! 
The  strangest  sight, — the  most  unlook'd-for  chance- 
All  things  turn'd  topsy-turvy  in  a  devil's  dance. 


"Stead  of  his  anxious  Majesty  and  court 
At  the  open  doors,  with  wide  saluting  eyes, 
Congees  and  scrape-graces  of  every  sort, 
And  all  the  smooth  routine  of  gallantries, 
Was  seen,  to  our  immoderate  surprise, 
A  motley  crowd  thick  gathered  in  the  hall. 
Lords,  scullions,  deputy-scullions,  with  wild  cries 
Stunning  the  vestibule  from  wall  to  wall. 
Where  the  Chief  Justice  on  his  knees  and  hands  doth  crawl 


Counts  of  the  palace,  and  the  state  purveyor 
Of  moth's  down,  to  make  soft  the  royal  beds, 
The  Common  Council  and  my  fool  Lord  Mayor 
Marching  a-row,  each  other  slipshod  treads ; 
Powder'd  bag-wigs  and  rufFy-tuffy  heads 
Of  cinder  wenches  meet  and  soil  each  other  ; 
Toe  crush'd  with  heel  ill-natured  fighting  breeds, 
Frill-rumpling  elbows  brew  up  many  a  bother, 
And  fists  in  the  short  ribs  keep  up  the  yell  and  pother. 

16* 


358  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


LXXXVII. 

A  Poet,  mounted  on  the  Court-Clown's  back, 

Rode  to  the  Princess  swift  with  spurring  heels. 

And  close  into  her  face,  with  rhyming  clack. 

Began  a  Prothalamion  ; — she  reels, 

She  falls,  she  faints ! — while  laughter  peals 

Over  her  woman's  weakness.     "  Where  !"  cried  I, 

"  Where  is  his  Majesty  ?"     No  person  feels 
Inclined  to  answer ;  wherefore  instantly 

I  plunged  into  the  crowd  to  find  him  or  to  die. 


LXXXVIII. 

Jostling  my  way  I  gain'd  the  stairs,  and  ran 
To  the  first  landing,  where,  incredible  ! 
I  met,  far  gone  in  liquor,  that  old  man. 

That  vile  impostor  Hum, 

So  far  so  well, 
For  we  have  proved  the  Mago  never  fell 
Down  stairs  on  Crafticanto's  evidence  ; 
And  therefore  duly  shall  proceed  to  tell. 
Plain  in  our  own  original  mood  and  tense, 
The  sequel  of  this  day,  though  labor  'tis  immense ! 


{No  more  was  written.) 


MISCELLANEOUS   POEMS, 


ODE  TO  APOLLO. 


In  thy  western  halls  of  gold 

When  thou  sittest  in  thy  state, 
Bards  that  erst  sublimely  told 

Heroic  deeds,  and  sang  of  fate, 
With  fervor  seize  their  adamantine  lyres, 
Whose  chords  are  solid  rays,  and  twinkle  radiant  fires. 


Here  Homer  with  his  nervous  arms 
Strikes  the  twanging  harp  of  war, 

And  even  the  western  splendor  warms, 
While  the  trumpets  sound  afar : 

But,  what  creates  the  most  intense  surprise, 

His  soul  looks  out  through  renovated  eyes. 


Then,  through  thy  Temple  wide,  melodious  swells 
The  sweet  majestic  tone  of  Maro's  lyre  : 

The  soul  delighted  on  each  accent  dwells, — 
Enraptured  dwells, — not  daring  to  respire. 
The  while  he  tells  of  grief  around  a  funeral  pyre. 


360  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


IV. 

'Tis  awful  silence  then  again  ; 
Expectant  stand  the  spheres  ; 
Breathless  the  laurel'd  peers, 
Nor  move,  till  ends  the  lofty  strain, 
Nor  move  till  Milton's  tuneful  thunders  cease, 
And  leave  once  more  the  ravish'd  heavens  in  peace. 


Thou  biddest  Shakspeare  wave  his  hand, 

And  quickly  forward  spring 
The  Passions — a  terrific  band — 

And  each  vibrates  the  string 
That  with  its  tyrant  temper  best  accords, 
While  from  their  Master's  lips  pour  forth  the  inspiring  words. 


VI. 

A  silver  trumpet  Spenser  blows, 

And,  as  its  martial  notes  to  silence  flee. 
From  a  virgin  chorus  flows 

A  hymn  in  praise  of  spotless  Chastity. 
'Tis  still !     Wild  warblings  from  the  iEolian  lyre 
Enchantment  softly  breathe,  and  tremblingly  expire. 


VII. 

Next  thy  Tasso's  ardent  numbers 

Float  along  the  pleased  air, 
Calling  youth  from  idle  slumbers, 

Rousing  them  from  pleasure's  lair  : — 
Then  o'er  the  strings  his  fingers  gently  move, 
And  melt  the  soul  to  pity  and  to  love. 


MISCELLANLOUS  POEMS.  361 


But  when  Thou  joinest  with  the  Nine, 
And  all  the  powers  of  song  combine, 

We  listen  here  on  earth  : 
The  dying  tones  that  fill  the  air, 
And  charm  the  ear  of  evening  fair, 
From  thee,  great  God  of  Bards,  receive  their  heavenly  birth. 

Feb.  1815. 


HYMN  TO  APOLLO. 

God  of  the  golden  bow. 

And  of  the  golden  lyre, 
And  of  the  golden  hair. 
And  of  the  golden  fire. 
Charioteer 
Of  the  patient  year. 
Where — where  slept  thine  ire. 
When  like  a  blank  idiot  I  put  on  thy  wreath, 
Thy  laurel,  thy  glory. 
The  light  of  thy  story. 
Or  was  I  a  worm — too  low  crawling,  for  death  ? 
O  Delphic  Apollo  ! 

The  Thunderer  grasp'd  and  grasp'd. 

The  Thunderer  frown'd  and  frovvn'd  ; 
The  eagle's  feathery  mane 

For  wrath  became  stiffen'd — the  sound 
Of  breeding  thunder 
Went  drowsily  under, 
Muttering  to  be  unbound. 


362  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

O  why  didst  thou  pity,  and  for  a  worm 

Why  touch  thy  soft  lute 

Till  the  thunder  was  mute, 
Why  was  not  I  crush'd — such  a  pitiful  germ  ? 

O  Delphic  Apollo ! 

The  Pleiades  were  up, 

Watching  the  silent  air  ; 
The  seeds  and  roots  in  the  Earth 
Were  swelling  for  summer  fare  ; 
The  Ocean,  its  neighbor. 
Was  at  its  old  labor. 
When,  who — who  did  dare 
To  tie,  like  a  madman,  thy  plant  round  his  brow, 
And  grin  and  look  proudly. 
And  blaspheme  so  loudly, 
And  live  for  that  honor,  to  stoop  to  thee  now  ? 
O  Delphic  Apollo ! 


ON    ...    . 

Think  not  of  it,  sweet  one,  so  j — 

Give  it  not  a  tear  ; 
Sigh  thou  mayst,  and  bid  it  go 

Any — any  where. 

Do  not  look  so  sad,  sweet  one, — 

Sad  and  fadingly ; 
Shed  one  drop  (and  only  one), 

Oh  !  'twas  born  to  die  ! 

Still  so  pale  ?  then  dearest  weep  ; 

Weep,  I  '11  count  the  tears, 
For  each  will  I  invent  a  bliss 

For  thee  in  after  years. 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  363 

Brighter  has  it  left  thine  eyes 

Than  a  sunny  rill ; 
And  thy  whispering  melodies 

Are  more  tender  still. 

Yet — as  all  things  mourn  awhile 

At  fleeting  blisses ; 
Let  us  too ;   but  be  our  dirge 

A  dirge  of  kisses. 


1817. 


LINES. 

Unfelt,  unheard,  unseen, 

I  've  left  my  little  queen. 
Her  languid  arms  in  silver  slumber  lying : 

Ah  !  through  their  nestling  touch, 

Who — who  could  tell  how  much 
There  is  for  madness — cruel,  or  complying  ? 

Those  faery  lids  how  sleek  ! 

Those  lips  how  moist ! — they  speak. 
In  ripest  quiet,  shadows  of  sweet  sounds  : 

Into  my  fancy's  ear 

Melting  a  burden  dear, 
How  "  Love  doth  know  no  fullness,  and  no  bounds." 

True  ! — tender  monitors  ! 

I  bend  unto  your  laws  : 
This  sweetest  day  for  dalliance  was  born  ! 

So,  without  more  ado, 

I  '11  feel  my  heaven  anew, 
For  all  the  blushing  of  the  hasty  mom. 


1817. 


364  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


SONG. 


Hush,  hush  !  tread  softly  !  hush,  hush,  my  dear  ! 
All  the  house  is  asleep,  but  we  know  very  well 
That  the  jealous,  the  jealous  old  bald-pate  may  hear, 
Tho'  you  've  padded  his  night-cap — O  sweet  Isabel ! 
Tho'  your  feet  are  more  light  than  a  Faery's  feet, 
Who  dances  on  bubbles  where  brooklets  meet, — 
Hush,  hush  !  soft  tiptoe  !  hush,  hush,  my  dear  ! 
For  less  than  a  nothing  the  jealous  can  hear. 


II. 

No  leaf  doth  tremble,  no  ripple  is  there 

On  the  river, — all 's  still,  and  the  night's  sleepy  eye 
Closes  up,  and  forgets  all  its  Lethean  care, 

Charm'd  to  death  by  the  drone  of  the  humming  May-fly ; 
And  the  moon,  whether  prudish  or  complaisant. 
Has  fled  to  her  bower,  well  knowing  I  want 
No  light  in  the  dusk,  no  torch  in  the  gloom. 
But  my  Isabel's  eyes,  and  her  lips  pulp'd  with  bloom. 


III. 

Lift  the  latch !  ah  gently  !  ah  tenderly — sweet ! 

We  are  dead  if  that  latchet  gives  one  little  clink ! 
Well  done — now  those  lips,  and  a  flowery  seat — 
The  old  man  may  sleep,  and  the  planets  may  wink  ; 
The  shut  rose  shall  dream  of  our  loves  and  awake 
Full-blown,  and  such  warmth  for  the  morning  take, 
The  stock-dove  shall  hatch  his  soft  twin-eggs  and  coo, 
While  I  kiss  to  the  melody,  aching  all  through  ! 


1818. 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  365 


SONG. 

I  HAD  a  dove  and  the  sweet  dove  died  ; 

And  I  have  thought  it  died  of  grieving : 
O,  what  could  it  grieve  for  ?     Its  feet  were  tied, 

With  a  silken  thread  of  my  own  hand's  weaving  ; 
Sweet  little  red  feet !  why  should  you  die — 
Why  would  you  leave  me,  sweet  bird  !  why  ? 
You  lived  alone  in  the  forest-tree, 
Why,  pretty  thing  !  would  you  not  live  with  me  ? 
I  kiss'd  you  oft  and  gave  you  white  peas  ; 
Why  not  live  sweetly,  as  in  the  green  trees  ? 

1818. 


FAERY  SONG. 


Shed  no  tear !  O,  shed  no  tear ! 
The  flower  will  bloom  another  year. 
Weep  no  more  !     O  !  weep  no  more  ! 
Young  buds  sleep  in  the  root's  white  core. 
Dry  your  eyes  !     Oh  !  dry  your  eyes ! 
For  I  was  taught  in  Paradise 
To  ease  my  breast  of  melodies — 
Shed  no  tear. 

Overhead  !  look  overhead  ! 
'Mong  the  blossoms  white  and  red — 
Look  up,  look  up.     I  flutter  now 
On  this  fresh  pomegranate  bough. 
See  me  !  'tis  tliis  silvery  bill 
Ever  cures  the  good  man's  ill. 
Shed  no  tear  !  O  shed  no  tear  ! 
The  flower  will  bloom  another  year. 
Adieu,  Adieu — I  fly,  adieu, 
I  vanish  in  the  heaven's  blue — 

Adieu,  Adieu  f 


366  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


SONG. 

Spirit  here  that  reignesti 
Spirit  here  that  painest  ! 
Spirit  here  that  burnest ! 
Spirit  here  that  mournest ! 

Spirit !  I  bow 

My  forehead  low, 
Enshaded  with  thy  pinions  ! 

Spirit !  I  look, 

All  passion-struck. 
Into  thy  pale  dominions  ! 

Spirit  here  that  laughest ! 
Spirit  here  that  quafFest ! 
Spirit  here  that  dancest ! 
Noble  soul  that  prancest ! 

Spirit !  with  thee 

I  join  in  the  glee, 
While  nudging  the  elbow  of  Momus  ! 

Spirit !  I  flush 

With  a  Bacchanal  blush, 
Just  fresh  from  the  banquet  of  Comus  ! 


FAERY  SONG. 


Ah  !  woe  is  me  !  poor  silver-wing  ! 

That  T  must  chant  thy  lady's  dirge, 
And  death  to  this  fair  haunt  of  spring, 

Of  melody,  and  streams  of  flowery  verge, — 
Poor  silver-wing  !  ah  !  woe  is  me  ! 
That  I  must  sec 
These  blossoms  snow  upon  thy  lady's  pall ! 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  367 

Go,  pretty  page  !  and  in  her  ear 

Whisper  that  the  hour  is  near  ! 

Softly  tell  her  not  to  fear 
Such  calm  favonian  burial ! 

Go,  pretty  page  !  and  soothly  tell, — 

The  blossoms  hang  by  a  melting  spell. 
And  fall  they  must,  ere  a  star  wink  thrice 

Upon  her  closed  eyes, 
That  now  in  vain  are  weeping  their  last  tears, 

At  sweet  life  leaving,  and  those  arbors  green, — 
Rich  dowry  from  the  Spirit  of  the  Spheres, — 
Alas  !  poor  Queen  ! 


EXTRACTS  FROM  AN  OPERA. 

O !  WERE  I  one  of  the  Olympian  twelve, 

Their  godships  should  pass  this  into  a  law, — 

That  when  a  man  doth  set  himself  in  toil 

After  some  beauty  veiled  far  away, 

Each  step  he  took  should  make  his  lady's  hand 

More  soft,  more  white,  and  her  fair  cheek  more  fair ; 

And  for  each  brier-berry  he  might  eat, 

A  kiss  should  bud  upon  the  tree  of  love. 

And  pulp  and  ripen  richer  every  hour, 

To  melt  away  upon  the  traveler's  lips. 


DAISY'S  SONG. 


The  sun,  with  his  great  eye. 
Sees  not  so  much  as  I  ; 
And  the  moon,  all  silver,  proud. 
Might  as  well  be  in  a  cloud. 


368  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

11. 

And  O  the  spring — the  spring  ! 
I  lead  the  life  of  a  king  ! 
Couch'd  in  the  teeming  grass, 
I  spy  each  pretty  lass. 

III. 

I  look  where  no  one  dares, 
And  I  stare  wh(?re  no  one  stares. 
And  when  the  night  is  nigh. 
Lambs  bleat  my  lullaby. 


FOLLY'S  SONG. 

When  wedding  fiddles  are  a-playing, 

Huzza  for  folly  O  ! 
And  when  maidens  go  a-Maying, 

Huzza,  (Ssc. 
When  a  milk-pail  is  upset, 

Huzza,  &c. 
And  the  clothes  left  in  the  wet. 

Huzza,  &c. 
When  the  barrel's  set  abroach. 

Huzza,  &c. 
When  Kate  Eyebrow  keeps  a  coach. 

Huzza,  &c. 
When  the  pig  is  over-roasted, 

Huzza,  &;c. 
And  the  cheese  is  over-toasted, 

Huzza,  &c. 
When  Sir  Snap  is  with  his  lawyer. 

Huzza,  &c. 
And  Miss  Chip  has  kiss'd  the  sawyer  ; 

Huzza,  &c. 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  369 


O,  I  am  frightcn'd  with  most  hateful  thoughts ! 
Perhaps  her  voice  is  not  a  nightingale's, 
Perhaps  her  teeth  are  not  the  fairest  pearl ; 
Her  eye-lashes  may  be,  for  aught  I  know, 
Not  longer  than  the  May-fly's  small  fan-horns  ; 
There  may  not  be  one  dimple  on  her  hand  ; 
And  freckles  many  ;  ah  !  a  careless  nurse, 
In  haste  to  teach  the  little  thing  to  walk, 
May  have  crumpt  up  a  pair  of  Dian's  legs, 
And  warpt  the  ivory  of  a  Juno's  neck. 


SONG. 
I. 
The  stranger  lighted  from  his  steed. 

And  ere  he  spake  a  word, 

He  seized  my  lady's  lily  hand, 

And  kiss'd  it  all  unheard. 


The  stranger  walk'd  into  the  hall. 
And  ere  he  spake  a  word, 

He  kiss'd  my  lady's  cherry  lips, 
And  kiss'd  'em  all  unheard. 

III. 
The  stranger  walk'd  into  the  bower,- 

But  my  lady  first  did  go, — 
Aye  hand  in  hand  into  the  bower, 

Where  my  lord's  roses  blow. 


My  lady's  maid  had  a  silken  scarf, 

And  a  golden  ring  had  she, 
And  a  kiss  from  the  stranger,  as  off  he  went 

Again  on  his  fair  palfrey. 
***** 


370  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Asleep  !  O  sleep  a  little  while,  white  pearl ! 
And  let  me  kneel,  and  let  me  pray  to  thee, 
And  let  me  call  heaven's  blessing  on  thine  eyes, 
And  let  me  breathe  into  the  happy  air. 
That  doth  enfold  and  touch  thee  all  about. 
Vows  of  my  slavery,  my  giving  up. 
My  sudden  adoration,  my  great  love  ! 

1818. 


LA  BELLE  DAME  SANS  MERCL 

A    BALLAD. 


O  WHAT  can  ail  thee,  knight-at-arms. 
Alone  and  palely  loitering  ? 

The  sedge  has  wither'd  from  the  lake. 
And  no  birds  sing. 


0  what  can  ail  thee,  knight-at-arms  ! 
So  haggard  and  so  woe-begone  ? 

The  squirrel's  granary  is  full, 
And  the  harvest's  done. 

III. 

1  see  a  lily  on  thy  brow 

With  anguish  moist  and  fever  dew, 
And  on  thy  cheeks  a  fading  rose 
Fast  withereth  too. 


I  met  a  lady  in  the  meads. 

Full  beautiful — a  faery's  child, 

Her  hair  was  long,  her  foot  was  light. 
And  her  eyes  were  wild. 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  371 


I  made  a  garland  for  her  head, 

And  bracelets  too,  and  fragrant  zone ; 

She  look'd  at  me  as  she  did  love, 
And  made  sweet  moan. 


I  set  her  on  my  pacing  steed, 

And  nothing  else  saw  all  day  long, 

For  sidelong  would  she  bend,  and  sing 
A  faery's  song. 


She  found  me  roots  of  relish  sweet, 
And  honey  wild,  and  manna  dew, 

And  sure  in  language  strange  she  said- 
"  I  love  thee  true." 


She  took  me  to  her  elfin  grot, 

And  there  she  wept,  and  sigh'd  full  sore, 
And  there  I  shut  her  wild  wild  eyes 

With  kisses  four. 


And  there  she  lulled  me  asleep, 

And  there  I  dream'd — Ah  !  woe  betide  ? 
The  latest  dream  I  ever  dream'd 

On  the  cold  hill's  side. 


I  saw  pale  kings  and  princes  too. 

Pale  warriors,  death-pale  were  they  all  ; 

They  cried — "  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci 
Hath  thee  in  thrall !" 


372  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

XI. 

I  saw  their  starved  lips  in  the  gloam, 
With  horrid  warning  gaped  wide, 

And  I  awoke  and  found  me  here, 
On  the  cold  hill's  side. 

XII. 

And  this  is  why  I  sojourn  here, 

Alone  and  palely  loitering, 
Though  the  sedge  is  wither'd  from  the  lake, 

And  no  birds  sing. 

1819. 


SONG  OF  FOUR  FAIRIES. 

FIRE,    AIR,    EARTH,    AND    WATER, 
SALAMANDER,   ZEPHYR,   DDSKETHA,   AND   BREAWA. 

Sal.     Happy,  happy  glowing  fire  ! 

Zep.     Fragrant  air  !  delicious  light ! 

Dus.     Let  me  to  my  glooms  retire  ! 

Bre.     I  to  green-weed  rivers  bright ! 

Sal.      Happy,  happy  glowing  fire  ! 

Dazzling  bowers  of  soft  retire. 

Ever  let  my  nourished  wing, 

Like  a  bat's,  still  wandering, 

Faintly  fan  your  fiery  spaces, 

Spirit  sole  in  deadly  places. 

In  unhaunted  roar  and  blaze, 

Open  eyes  that  never  daze, 

Let  me  see  the  myriad  shapes 

Of  men,  and  beasts,  and  fish,  and  apes, 

Portray'd  in  many  a  fiery  den. 

And  wrought  by  spumy  bitumen. 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  373 

On  the  deep  intensev  roof, 

Arched  every  way,  aloof, 

Let  me  breathe  upon  their  skies, 

And  anger  their  live  tapestries  ; 

Free  from  cold,  and  every  care. 

Of  chilly  rain,  and  shivering  air. 
Zep.     Spirit  of  Fire  !  away  !  away  ! 

Or  your  very  roundelay 

Will  sear  my  plumage  newly  budded 

From  its  quilled  sheath,  all  studded 

With  the  self-same  dews  that  fell 

On  the  May-grown  Asphodel. 

Spirit  of  Fire — away  !  away  ! 
Bre.     Spirit  of  Fire — away!  away! 

Zephyr,  blue-eyed  fairy,  turn, 

And  see  my  cool  sedge-buried  urn, 

Where  it  rests  its  mossy  brim 

'Mid  water-mint  and  cresses  dim  ; 

And  the  flowers,  in  sweet  troubles. 

Lift  their  eyes  above  the  bubbles, 

Like  our  Queen,  when  she  would  please 

To  sleep,  and  Oberon  will  tease. 

Love  me,  blue-eyed  Fairy  !  true, 

Soothly  I  am  sick  for  you. 
Zep.     Gentle  Breama  !  by  the  first 

Violet  young  nature  nurst, 

I  will  bathe  myself  with  thee. 

So  you  sometimes  follow  me 

To  my  home,  far,  far,  in  west. 

Beyond  the  nimble-wheeled  quest 

Of  the  golden- browed  sun  : 
Come  with  me,  o'er  tops  of  trees. 

To  my  fragrant  palaces. 

Where  they  ever  floating  are 

Beneath  the  cherish  of  a  star 
Call'd  Vesper,  who  with  silver  veil 
Ever  hides  his  brilliance  pale, 
17 


374  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Ever  gently-drows'd  doth  keep 
Twilight  for  the  Fayes  to  sleep. 
Fear  not  that  your  watery  hair 
Will  thirst  in  drouthy  ringlets  there  ; 
Clouds  of  stored  summer  rains 
Thou  shalt  taste,  before  the  stains 
Of  the  mountain  soil  they  take, 
And  too  unlucent  for  thee  make. 
I  love  thee,  crystal  Fairy,  true ! 
Sooth  I  am  as  sick  for  you  ! 
Sal.    Out,  ye  aguish  Fairies,  out ! 
Chilly  lovers,  what  a  rout 
Keep  ye  with  your  frozen  breath, 
Colder  than  the  mortal  death. 
Adder-eyed  Dusketha,  speak, 
Shall  we  leave  these,  and  go  seek 
In  the  earth's  wide  entrails  old 
Couches  warm  as  theirs  are  cold  ? 

0  for  a  fiery  gloom  and  thee, 
Dusketha,  so  enchantingly 
Freckle-wing'd  and  lizard-sided ! 

Bus.  By  thee,  Sprite,  will  I  be  guided  ! 

1  care  not  for  cold  or  heat ; 

Frost  and  flame,  or  sparks,  or  sleet, 
To  my  essence  are  the  same  ; — 
But  I  honor  more  the  flame. 
Sprite  of  fire,  I  follow  thee 
Wheresoever  it  may  be, 
To  the  torrid  spouts  and  fountains. 
Underneath  earth-quaked  mountains ; 
Or,  at  thy  supreme  desire. 
Touch  the  very  pulse  of  fire 
With  my  bare  unlidded  eyes. 

Sal.    Sweet  Dusketha !  paradise  ! 
Off*,  ye  icy  Spirits,  fly ! 

Bus.  Breathe  upon  them,  fiery  sprite  ! 

D      >  Away  !  away  to  our  delight  ? 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  375 

Sal.    Go,  feed  on  icicles,  while  we 

Bedded  in  tongue-flames  will  be. 
Dus.  Lead  me  to  these  feverous  glooms, 

Sprite  of  Fire  ! 
Bre.  Me  to  the  blooms. 

Blue-eyed  Zephyr,  of  those  flowers 

Far  in  the  west  where  the  May-cloud  lowers  : 

And  the  beams  of  still  Vesper,  when  winds  are  all 
wist, 

Are  shed  thro'  the  rain  and  the  milder  mist, 

And  twilight  your  floating  bowers. 
1819. 


ODE  ON  INDOLENCE. 

'  They  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin." 


One  morn  before  me  were  three  figures  seen. 

With  bowed  necks,  and  joined  hands,  side-faced  ; 
And  one  behind  the  other  stepp'd  serene, 

In  placid  sandals,  and  in  white  robes  graced ; 
They  pass'd,  like  figures  on  a  marble  urn. 

When  shifted  round  to  see  the  other  side  ; 
They  came  again  ;   as  when  the  urn  once  more 
Is  shifted  round,  the  first  seen  shades  return  ; 

And  they  were  strange  to  me,  as  may  betide 
With  vases,  to  one  deep  in  Phidian  lore. 


How  is  it.  Shadows  !  that  I  knew  ye  not  ? 

How  came  ye  muffled  in  so  hush  a  mask  '? 

Was  it  a  silent  deep-disguised  plot 

To  steal  away,  and  leave  without  a  task 
My  idle  days  ?     Ripo  was  the  drowsy  hour  ; 


376  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


The  blissful  cloud  of  summer-indolence 
Benumb'd  my  eyes  ;  my  pulse  grew  less  and  less  ; 

Pain  had  no  sting,  and  pleasure's  wreath  no  flower 

O,  why  did  ye  not  melt,  and  leave  my  sense 
Unhaunted  quite  of  all  but — nothingness  ? 

III. 

A  third  time  pass'd  they  by,  and,  passing,  turn'd 

Each  one  the  face  a  moment  whiles  to  me  ; 
Then  faded,  and  to  follow  them  I  burn'd 

And  ached  for  wings,  because  I  knew  the  three  ; 
The  first  was  a  fair  Maid,  and  Love  her  name  ; 

The  second  was  Ambition,  pale  of  cheek, 
And  ever  watchful  with  fatigued  eye  ; 

The  last,  whom  I  love  more,  the  more  of  blame 

Is  heap'd  upon  her,  maiden  most  unmeek, — 
I  knew  to  be  my  demon  Poesy. 


They  faded,  and,  forsooth  !  I  wanted  wings  : 

O  folly  !     What  is  Love  ?  and  where  is  it  ? 
And  for  that  poor  Ambition  !  it  springs 

From  a  man's  little  heart's  short  fever-fit ; 
For  Poesy  ! — no, — she  has  not  a  joy, — 

At  least  for  me, — so  sweet  as  drowsy  noons, 
And  evenings  steep'd  in  honied  indolence ; 
O,  for  an  age  so  shelter'd  from  annoy. 

That  I  may  never  know  how  change  the  moons. 
Or  hear  the  voice  of  busy  common-sense ! 


And  once  more  came  they  by  ; — alas  !  wherefore  ? 

My  sleep  had  been  embroider'd  with  dim  dreams ; 
My  soul  had  been  a  lawn  besprinkled  o'er 

With  flowers,  and  stirring  shades,  and  bafiled  beams 
The  morn  was  clouded,  but  no  shower  fell, 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  377 


Tho'  in  her  lids  hung  the  sweet  tears  of  May  ; 
The  open  casement  press'd  a  new-leaved  vine, 

Let  in  the  budding  warmth  and  throstle's  lay  ; 
O  Shadows !  'twas  a  time  to  bid  farewell ! 
Upon  your  skirts  had  fallen  no  tears  of  mine. 

VI. 

So,  ye  three  Ghosts,  adieu  !     Ye  cannot  raise 

My  head  cool-bedded  in  the  flowery  grass ; 
For  I  would  not  be  dieted  with  praise, 

A  pet-lamb  in  a  sentimental  farce ! 

Fade  softly  from  my  eyes,  and  be  once  more 

In  masque-like  figures  on  the  dreamy  urn  ; 
Farewell  !     I  yet  have  visions  for  the  night, 

And  for  the  day  faint  visions  there  is  store ; 

Vanish,  ye  Phantoms !  from  my  idle  spright, 
Into  the  clouds,  and  never  more  return ! 

1819. 


THE  EVE  OF  SAINT  MARK. 

(unfinished.) 

Upon  a  Sabbath-day  it  fell ; 
Twice  holy  was  the  Sabbath-bell, 
That  call'd  the  folk  to  evening  prayer  ; 
The  city  streets  were  clean  and  fair 
From  wholesome  drench  of  April  rains, 
And,  on  the  western  window  panes. 
The  chilly  sunset  faintly  told 
Of  unmatured  green,  valleys  cold, 
Of  the  green  thorny  bloomless  hedge. 
Of  rivers  new  with  spring-tide  sedge. 
Of  primroses  by  shelter'd  rills, 
And  dasies  on  the  aguish  hills. 


378  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

Twice  holy  was  the  Sabbath-bell : 
The  silent  streets  were  crowded  well 
With  staid  and  pious  companies, 
Warm  from  their  fireside  orat'ries  ; 
And  moving,  with  demurest  air, 
To  even-song,  and  vesper  prayer. 
Each  arched  porch,  and  entry  low. 
Was  fill'd  with  patient  folk  and  slow, 
With  whispers  hush,  and  shuffling  feet, 
While  play'd  the  organ  loud  and  sweet. 

The  bells  had  ceased,  the  prayers  begun. 
And  Bertha  had  not  yet  half  done 
A  curious  volume,  patch'd  and  torn. 
That  all  day  long,  from  earliest  morn. 
Had  taken  captive  her  two  eyes. 
Among  its  golden  broideries  ; 
Perplex'd  her  with  a  thousand  things, — 
The  stars  of  Heaven,  and  angels'  wings, 
Martyrs  in  a  fiery  blaze, 
Azure  saints  and  silver  rays, 
Moses'  breastplate,  and  the  seven 
Candlesticks  John  saw  in  Heaven, 
The  winged  Lion  of  Saint  Mark, 
And  the  Covenantal  Ark, 
With  its  many  mysteries, 
Cherubim  and  golden  mice. 

Bertha  was  a  maiden  fair. 
Dwelling  in  tli'  old  Minster-square  ; 
From  her  fireside  she  could  see. 
Sidelong,  its  rich  antiquity. 
Far  as  the  Bishop's  garden-wall ; 
Where  sycamores  and  elm-trees  tall. 
Full-leaved,  the  forest  had  outstript, 
By  no  sharp  north-wind  ever  nipt. 
So  shelter'd  by  the  mighty  pile. 
Bertha  arose,  and  read  awhile, 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  379 

With  forehead  'gainst  the  window-pane. 
Again  she  tried,  and  then  again, 
Until  the  dusk  eve  left  her  dark 
Upon  the  legend  of  St.  Mark. 
From  plaited  lawn-frill,  fine  and  thin, 
She  lifted  up  her  soft  warm  chin, 
With  aching  neck  and  swimming  eyes 
And  dazed  with  saintly  imag'ries. 

All  was  gloom,  and  silent  all, 
Save  now  and  then  the  still  foot-fall 
Of  one  returning  homewards  late, 
Past  the  echoino:  minster-gate. 
The  clamorous  daws,  that  all  the  day 
Above  tree-tops  and  towers  play. 
Pair  by  pair  had  gone  to  rest. 
Each  in  its  ancient  belfry-nest, 
Where  asleep  they  fall  betimes, 
To  music  and  the  drowsy  chimes. 

All  was  silent,  all  was  gloom. 

Abroad  and  in  the  homely  room  : 

Down  she  sat,  poor  cheated  soul ! 

And  struck  a  lamp  from  the  dismal  coal ; 

Leaned  forward,  with  bright  drooping  hair 

And  slant  book,  full  against  the  glare. 

Her  shadow,  in  uneasy  guise. 

Hover'd  about,  a  giant  size, 

On  ceiling-beam  and  old  oak  chair, 

The  parrot's  cage,  and  panel  square ; 

And  the  warm  angled  winter-screen, 

On  which  were  many  monsters  seen, 

Call'd  doves  of  Siam,  Lima  mice, 

And  legless  birds  of  Paradise, 

Macaw,  and  tender  Av'davat, 

And  silken-furr'd  Angora  cat. 

Untired  she  read,  her  shadow  still 

Glower'd  about,  as  it  would  fill 


3R0  LITERARY  REMAINS. 

The  room  with  wildest  forms  and  shades, 
As  though  some  ghostly  queen  of  spades 
Had  come  to  mock  behind  her  back, 
And  dance,  and  ruffle  her  garments  black. 
Untired  she  read  the  legend  page, 
Of  holy  Mark,  from  youth  to  age, 
On  land,  on  sea,  in  pagan  chains, 
Rejoicing  for  his  many  pains. 
Sometimes  the  learned  eremite. 
With  golden  star,  or  dagger  bright, 
Referr'd  to  pious  poesies 
Written  in  smallest  crow-quill  size 
Beneath  the  text ;  and  thus  the  rhyme 
Was  parcel'd  out  from  time  to  time  : 

"  Als  writith  he  of  swevenis, 

Men  han  beforne  they  wake  in  bliss, 

Whanne  that  hir  friendes  thinke  him  bound 

In  crimped  shreude  farre  under  grounde  ; 

And  how  a  litling  child  mote  be 

A  saint  er  its  nativitie, 

Gif  that  the  modre  (God  her  blesse  !) 

Kepen  in  solitarinesse, 

And  kissen  devoute  the  holy  croce. 

Of  Goddes  love,  arid  Sathan's  force, — 

He  writith  ;  and  thinges  many  mo 

Of  swiche  thinges  I  may  not  shew. 

Bot  I  must  tellen  verilie 

Somdcl  of  Sainte  Cicilie, 

And  chieflie  what  he  auctorethe 

Of  Sainte  Markis  life  and  dethe :" 

At  length  her  constant  eyelids  come 
Upon  the  fervent  martyrdom  ; 
Then  lastly  to  his  holy  shrine, 
Exalt  amid  the  tapers'  shine 
At  Venice, — 

1819. 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS.  381 


TO  FANNY. 

Physician  Nature  !  let  my  spirit  blood  ! 

0  ease  my  heart  of  verse  and  let  me  rest ; 
Throw  me  upon  thy  Tripod,  till  the  flood 

Of  stifling  numbers  ebbs  from  my  full  breast. 
A  theme  !  a  theme  !  great  nature  !  give  a  theme  ; 
Let  me  begin  my  dream. 

1  come — I  see  thee,  as  thou  standest  there. 
Beckon  me  not  into  the  wintry  air. 

Ah  !  dearest  love,  sweet  home  of  all  my  fears, 
And  hopes,  and  joys,  and  panting  miseries, — 
To-night,  if  I  may  guess,  thy  beauty  wears 

A  smile  of  such  delight, 

As  brilliant  and  as  bright. 
As  when  with  ravished,  aching,  vassal  eyes, 

Lost  in  soft  amaze, 

I  gaze,  I  gaze ! 

Who  now,  with  greedy  looks,  eats  up  my  feast  ? 
What  stare  outfaces  now  my  silver  moon  ! 
Ah  !  keep  that  iiand  unravished  at  the  least; 

Let,  let,  the  amorous  burn — 

But,  pr'ythee,  do  not  turn 
The  current  of  your  heart  from  me  so  soon. 

O  !  save,  in  charity. 

The  quickest  pulse  for  me. 

Save  it  for  me,  sweet  love  !  though  music  breathe 
Voluptuous  visions  into  the  warm  air. 
Though  swimming  through  the  dance's  dangerous  wreath; 
Be  like  an  April  day, 
Smiling  and  cold  and  gay, 
A  temperate  lily,  temperate  as  fair  ; 
Then,  Heaven  !  there  will  be 
A  warmer  June  for  me. 
17» 


382  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


Why,  this — you'll  say,  my  Fanny  !  is  not  true  : 

Put  your  soft  hand  upon  your  snowy  side, 

Where  the  heart  beats  :  confess — 'tis  nothing  new — 

Must  not  a  woman  be 

A  feather  on  the  sea, 
Sway'd  to  and  fro  by  every  wind  and  tide  ? 

Of  as  uncertain  speed 

As  blow-ball  from  the  mead  ? 

I  know  it — and  to  know  it  is  despair 

To  one  who  loves  you  as  I  love,  sweet  Fanny  ! 

Whose  heart  goes  flutt'ring  for  you  every  where. 

Nor,  when  away  you  roam, 

Dare  keep  its  vi^retched  home, 
Love,  love  alone,  his  pains  severe  and  many  : 

Then,  loveliest !  keep  me  free, 

From  torturing  jealousy. 

Ah  !  if  you  prize  my  subdued  soul  above 
The  poor,  the  fading,  brief,  pride  of  an  hour; 
Let  none  profane  my  Holy  See  of  love, 

Or  with  a  rude  hand  bi'cak 

The  sacramental  cake  : 
Let  none  else  touch  the  just  new-budded  flower  ; 

If  not — may  my  eyes  close. 

Love  !  on  their  lost  repose. 


SONNETS 


Oh  !  how  I  love,  on  a  fair  summer's  eve, 

When  streams  of  light  pour  down  the  golden  west, 
And  on  the  balmy  zephyrs  tranquil  rest 

The  silver  clouds,  far — far  away  to  leave 

All  meaner  thoughts,  and  take  a  sweet  reprieve 
From  little  cares ;  to  find,  with  easy  quest, 
A  fragrant  wild,  with  Nature's  beauty  drest. 

And  there  into  delight  my  soul  deceive. 

There  warm  my  breast  with  patriotic  lore. 
Musing  on  Milton's  fate — on  Sydney's  bier — 
Till  their  stern  forms  before  my  mind  arise  : 

Perhaps  on  wing  of  Poesy  upsoar, 
Full  often  dropping  a  delicious  tear. 
When  some  melodious  sorrow  spells  mine  eyes. 

1816. 


384  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


TO  A  YOUNG  LADY  WHO  SENT  ME  A  LAUREL  CROWN. 

Fresh  morning  gusts  have  blown  away  all  fear 

From  my  glad  bosom — now  from  gloominess 

I  mount  for  ever — not  an  atom  less 
Than  the  proud  laurel  shall  content  my  bier. 
No  !  by  the  eternal  stars  !  or  why  sit  here 

In  the  Sun's  eye,  and  'gainst  my  temples  press 

Apollo's  very  leaves,  woven  to  bless 
By  thy  white  fingers  and  thy  spirit  clear. 
Lo  !  who  dares  say,  "  Do  this  ?"     Who  dares  call  down 

My  will  from  its  high  purpose  ?     Who  say,  "  Stand," 
Or  "  Go  ?"     This  mighty  moment  I  would  frown 

On  abject  Caesars — not  the  stoutest  band 
Of  mailed  heroes  should  tear  off  my  crown  : 

Yet  would  I  kneel  and  kiss  thy  gentle  hand  ! 


III. 

After  dark  vapors  have  oppress'd  our  plains 
For  a  long  dreary  season,  comes  a  day 
Born  of  the  gentle  south,  and  clears  away 

From  the  sick  heavens  all  unseemly  stains. 

The  anxious  mouth,  relieved  from  its  pains, 
Takes  as  a  long-lost  right  the  feel  of  May, 
The  eyelids  with  the  passing  coolness  play. 

Like  rose  leaves  with  the  drip  of  summer  rains. 

And  calmest  thoughts  come  round  us — as,  of  leaves 
Budding, — fruit  ripening  in  stillnpss, — autumn  suns 

Smiling  at  eve  upon  the  quiet  sheaves, — 

Sweet  Sappho's  check, — a  sleeping  infant's  breath, — 
The  gradual  sand  that  through  an  hour-glass  runs,— 

A  woodland  rivulet, — a  Poet's  death. 

Jan.  1817. 


SONNETS.  385 


IV. 

WRITTEN  ON  THE  BLANK  SPACE  OF  A  LEAF  AT  THE  END  OF  CHAUCER'S  TALE 
OF  "  THE  FLOW'RE  AND  THE  LEFE." 

This  pleasant  tale  is  like  a  little  copse  : 

The  honied  lines  so  freshly  interlace, 

To  keep  the  reader  in  so  sweet  a  place, 
So  that  he  here  and  there  full-hearted  stops ; 
And  oftentimes  he  feels  the  dewy  drops 

Come  cool  and  suddenly  against  his  face. 

And,  by  the  wandering  melody,  may  trace 
Which  way  the  tender-legged  linnet  hops. 
Oh  !  what  a  power  has  white  simplicity  ! 

What  mighty  power  has  this  gentle  story  ! 

I,  that  do  ever  feel  athirst  for  glory, 
Could  at  this  moment  be  content  to  lie 

Meekly  upon  the  grass,  as  those  whose  sobbings 

Were  heard  of  none  beside  the  mournful  robins. 

Feb.  1817. 

V. 
ON  THE  SEA. 

It  keeps  eternal  whisperings  around 

Desolate  shores,  and  with  its  mighty  swell 
Gluts  twice  ten  thousand  caverns,  till  the  spell 

Of  Hecate  leaves  them  their  old  shadowy  sound. 

Often  'tis  in  such  gentle  temper  found, 
That  scarcely  will  the  very  smallest  shell 
Be  moved  for  days  from  where  it  sometime  fell, 

When  last  the  winds  of  heaven  were  unbound. 

Oh  ye  !  who  have  your  eye-balls  vexed  and  tired, 
Feast  them  upon  the  widencss  of  the  Sea  ; 

Oh  ye  !  whose  ears  are  dinn'd  with  uproar  rude. 
Or  fed  too  much  with  cloying  melody, — 

Sit  ye  near  some  old  cavern's  mouth,  and  brood 

Until  ye  start,  as  if  the  soa-nymphs  quired  ! 

Aug.  1817. 


LITERARY  REMAINS. 


VI. 

ON  LEIGH  HUNT'S  POEM,  THE  "  STORY  OF  RIMINI." 

Who  loves  to  peer  up  at  the  morning  sun, 
With  half-shut  eyes  and  comfortable  cheek, 
Let  him,  with  this  sweet  tale,  full  often  seek 

For  meadows  where  the  little  rivers  run  ; 

Who  loves  to  linger  with  that  brightest  one 
Of  Heaven — Hesperus — let  him  lowly  speak 
These  numbers  to  the  night,  and  starlight  meek, 

Or  moon,  if  that  her  hunting  be  begun. 

He  who  knows  these  delights,  and  too  is  prone 
To  moralize  upon  a  smile  or  tear, 

Will  find  at  once  a  region  of  his  own, 
A  bower  for  his  spirit,  and  will  steer 

To  alleys,  where  the  fir-tree  drops  its  cone. 
Where  robins  hop,  and  fallen  leaves  are  sear. 

1817. 

VII. 

When  I  have  fears  that  I  may  cease  to  be 

Before  my  pen  has  glcan'd  my  teeming  brain. 
Before  high  piled  books,  in  charact'ry, 

Hold  like  rich  garners  the  fuU-ripen'd  gi'ain ; 
When  I  behold,  upon  the  night's  starr'd  face, 

Huge  cloudy  symbols  of  a  high  romance. 
And  think  that  I  may  never  live  to  trace 

Their  shadows,  with  the  magic  hand  of  chance ; 
And  when  I  feel,  fair  creature  of  an  hour  ! 

That  I  shall  never  look  upon  thee  more, 
Never  have  relish  in  the  faery  power 

Of  unreflecting  love  ! — then  on  the  shore 
Of  the  wide  world  I  stand  alone,  and  think 
Till  Love  and  Fame  to  nothingness  do  sink. 

1817. 


SONNETS.  387 


TO  HOMER. 

Standing  aloof  in  giant  ignorance, 

Of  thee  I  hear  and  of  the  Cyclades, 
As  one  who  sits  ashore  and  longs  perchance 

To  visit  dolphin-coral  in  deep  seas. 
So  thou  wast  blind  ! — but  then  the  veil  was  rent, 

For  Jove  uncurtain'd  Heaven  to  let  thee  live, 
And  Neptune  made  for  thee  a  spermy  tent. 

And  Pan  made  sing  for  thee  his  forest-iiive  ; 
Aye,  on  the  shores  of  darkness  there  is  light, 

And  precipices  show  untrodden  green  ! 
There  is  a  budding  morrow  in  midnight ; 

There  is  a  triple  sight  in  blindness  keen  ; 
Such  seeing  hadst  thou,  as  it  once  befell. 
To  Dian,  Queen  of  Earth,  and  Heaven,  and  Hell. 
1818. 

IX. 

ANSWER  TO  A  SONNET  ENDING  THUS  :— 

"  Dark  es'es  are  dearer  far 
Than  those  that  made  the  hyaciiithine  bell  ;" 

By  J.  H.  Reynolds. 

Blue  !  'Tis  the  life  of  heaven, — the  domain 

Of  Cynthia, — the  wide  palace  of  the  sun, — 
The  tent  of  Hesperus,  and  all  his  train, — 

The  bosomer  of  clouds,  gold,  gray  and  dun. 
Blue  !  'Tis  the  life  of  waters — ocean 

And  all  its  vassal  streams  :  pools  numberless 
May  rage,  and  foam,  and  fret,  but  never  can 

Subside,  if  not  to  dark-blue  nativeness. 
Blue  !  Gentle  cousin  of  the  forest-green, 

Married  to  green  in  all  the  sweetest  flowers — 
Forget-me-not, — the  blue  bell, — and,  that  queen 

Of  secrecy,  the  violet :  what  strange  powers 
Hast  thou,  as  a  mere  shadow  !     But  how  great, 
When  in  an  Eye  thou  art  alive  with  fixte  ! 
Feb.  1818. 


388  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


TO  J.  H.  REYNOLDS. 

O  THAT  a  week  could  be  an  age,  and  we 

Felt  parting  and  warm  meeting  every  week, 
Then  one  poor  year  a  thousand  years  would  be. 

The  flush  of  welcome  ever  on  the  cheek  : 
So  could  we  live  long  life  in  little  space, 

So  time  itself  would  be  annihilate. 
So  a  day's  journey  in  oblivious  haze 

To  serve  our  joys  would  lengthen  and  dilate. 
O  to  arrive  each  Monday  morn  from  Ind  ! 

To  land  each  Tuesday  from  the  rich  Levant ! 
Ill  little  time  a  host  of  joys  to  bind, 

And  keep  our  .souls  in  one  eternal  pant ! 
This  morn,  iny  friend,  and  yester-evening  taught 
Me  how  to  harbor  such  a  happy  thought. 


XI. 
TO  .* 

Time's  sea  hath  been  five  years  at  its  slow  ebb ; 

Long  hours  have  to  and  fro  let  creep  the  sand  ; 
Since  I  was  tangled  in  thy  beauty's  web. 

And  snared  by  the  ungloving  of  thine  hand. 
And  yet  I  never  look  on  midnight  sky, 

But  I  behold  thine  eyes'  well  mcmoricd  light ; 
I  cannot  look  upon  the  loose's  dye, 

But  to  thy  cheek  my  soul  doth  take  its  flight ; 
I  cannot  look  on  any  budding  flower. 

But  my  fond  ear,  in  fancy  at  thy  lips. 
And  hearkening  for  a  love-sound,  doth  devour 

Its  sweets  in  the  wrong  sense : — Thou  dost  eclipse 
Every  delight  with  sweet  remembering, 
And  grief  unto  my  darling  joys  dost  bring. 

*  A  lady  whom  he  ?aw  for  some  moments  at  Vauxhall. 


SONNETS.  389 


TO  SLEEP. 

O  SOFT  embalmcr  of  the  still  midnight ! 

Shutting,  with  careful  fingers  and  benign, 
Our  gloom-pleased  eyes,  embower'd  from  the  light, 

Enshaded  in  forgctfulness  divine  ; 
O  soothest  Sleep !  if  so  it  please  thee,  close, 

In  midst  of  this  thine  hymn,  my  willing  eyes. 
Or  wait  the  amen,  ere  thy  poppy  throws 

Around  my  bed  its  lulling  charities  ; 
Then  save  me,  or  the  passed  day  will  shine 
Upon  my  pillow,  breeding  many  woes  ; 

Save  me  from  curious  conscience,  that  still  lords 
Its  strength,  for  darkness  burrowing  like  a  mole ; 

Turn  the  key  deftly  in  the  oiled  wards, 
And  seal  the  hushed  casket  of  my  soul. 

1819. 


ON  FAME 

Fame,  like  a  wayward  girl,  will  still  be  coy 

To  those  who  woo  her  with  too  slavisli  knees. 
But  makes  surrender  to  some  thoughtless  boy. 

And  dotes  the  more  upon  a  heart  at  ease ; 
She  is  a  Gipsey, — will  not  speak  to  those 

Who  have  not  learnt  to  be  content  without  her ; 
A  Jilt,  wliose  ear  was  never  whisper'd  close, 

Wlio  thinks  they  scandal  her  who  talk  about  her; 
A  very  Gipsey  is  she,  Nilus-born, 

Sister-in-law  to  jealous  Potiphar  ; 
Ye  love-sick  Bards !  repay  her  scorn  for  scorn  ; 

Ye  Artists  lovelorn  !  madmen  that  ye  are  ! 
Make  your  best  bow  to  her  and  bid  adieu, 

Then,  if  she  likes  it,  she  will  follow  you. 
1819. 


390  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


ON  FAME. 
"  You  cannot  eat  your  cake  and  have  it  too." — Proverb. 

How  fever'd  is  the  man,  who  cannot  look 

Upon  his  mortal  days  with  temperate  blood, 
Who  vexes  all  the  leaves  of  his  life's  book. 

And  robs  his  fair  name  of  its  maidenhood ; 
It  is  as  if  the  rose  should  pluck  herself, 

Or  the  ripe  plum  finger  its  misty  bloom. 
As  if  a  Naiad,  like  a  meddling  elf. 

Should  darken  her  pure  grot  with  muddy  gloom  : 
But  the  rose  leaves  herself  upon  the  brier. 

For  winds  to  kiss  and  grateful  bees  to  feed, 
And  the  ripe  plum  still  wears  its  dim  attire, 

The  undisturbed  lake  has  crystal  space ; 

Why  then  should  man,  teasing  the  world  for  grace, 

Spoil  his  salvation  for  a  fierce  miscreed  ? 
1819. 

XV. 

Why  did  I  laugh  to-night  ?     No  voice  will  tell : 

No  God,  no  Demon  of  severe  response. 
Deigns  to  reply  from  Heaven  or  from  Hell. 

Then  to  my  human  heart  I  turn  at  once 
Heart !     Thou  and  I  are  here  sad  and  alone  ; 

I  say,  why  did  I  laugh  ?     O  mortal  pain  ! 
O  Darkness  !  Darkness !  ever  must  I  moan. 

To  question  Heaven  and  Hell  and  Heart  in  vain. 
Why  did  I  laugh  1     I  know  this  Being's  lease. 

My  fancy  to  its  utmost  blisses  spreads  ; 
Yet  would  I  on  this  very  midnight  cease, 

And  the  world's  gaudy  ensigns  see  in  shreds  ; 
Verse,  Fame,  and  Beauty  are  inten.se  indeed. 
But  Death  intenser — Death  is  Life's  high  meed. 
1819. 


SONNETS.  391 


ON  A  DREAM* 

As  Hermes  once  took  to  his  feathers  light, 

When  lulled  Argus,  baffled,  swoon'd  and  slept, 
So  on  a  Delphic  reed,  my  idle  spright, 

So  play'd,  so  charm'd,  so  conquer'd,  so  bereft 
The  dragon- world  of  all  its  hundred  eyes, 

And  seeing  it  asleep,  so  fled  away, 
Not  to  pure  Ida  with  its  snow-cold  skies. 

Nor  unto  Tempe,  where  Jove  grieved  a  day, 
But  to  that  second  circle  of  sad  Hell, 

Where  in  the  gust,  the  whirlwind,  and  tlie  flaw 
Of  rain  and  hail-stones,  lovers  need  not  tell 

Their  sorrows, — pale  were  the  sweet  lips  I  saw. 
Pale  were  the  lips  I  kiss'd,  and  fair  the  form 
I  floated  with,  about  that  melancholy  storm. 

1819. 

XVII. 

If  by  dull  rhymes  our  English  must  be  chain'd. 
And,  like  Andromeda,  the  Sonnet  sweet 

Fetter'd,  in  spite  of  pained  loveliness ; 

Let  us  find  out,  if  we  must  be  constrain'd. 
Sandals  more  interwoven  and  complete 

To  fit  the  naked  foot  of  poesy  ; 

Let  us  inspect  the  lyre,  and  weigh  the  stress 

Of  every  chord,  and  see  what  may  be  gain'd 
By  ear  industrious,  and  attention  meet : 

Misers  of  sound  and  syllable,  no  less 
Than  Midas  of  his  coinage,  let  us  be 
Jealous  of  dead  leaves  in  the  bay  wreath  crown  ; 

So,  if  we  may  not  let  the  Muse  be  free, 

She  will  be  bound  with  garlands  of  her  own. 

1819. 

»  (See  page  179.) 


392  LITERARY  REMAINS. 


XVIII. 

The  day  is  gone,  and  all  its  sweets  are  gone  ! 

Sweet  voice,  sweet  lips,  soft  hand,  and  softer  breast, 
Warm  breath,  light  whisper,  tender  semi-tone, 

Bright  eyes,  accomplish'd  shape,  and  lang'rous  waist ! 
Faded  the  flower  and  all  its  budded  charms. 

Faded  the  sight  of  beauty  from  my  eyes, 
Faded  the  shape  of  beauty  from  my  arms, 

Faded  the  voice,  warmth,  whiteness,  paradise — 
Vanish'd  unseasonably  at  shut  of  eve. 

When  the  dusk  holiday — or  holinight 
Of  fragrant-curtain'd  love  begins  to  weave 

The  woof  of  darkness  thick,  for  hid  delight; 
But,  as  I've  read  love's  missal  through  to-day, 
He'  11  let  me  sleep,  seeing  I  fast  and  pray. 

1819 


I  CRY  your  mercy — pity — love — aye,  love  ! 

Merciful  love  that  tantalizes  not, 
One-thoughted,  never-wandering,  guileless  love, 

Unmask'd,  and  being  seen — without  a  blot ! 
O  !  let  me  have  thee  whole, — all — all — be  mine  ! 

That  shape,  that  fairness,  that  sweet  minor  zest 
Of  love,  your  kiss, — those  hands,  those  eyes  divine. 

That  warm,  white,  lucent,  million-pleasured  breast,- 
Yourself — your  soul — in  pity  give  me  all. 

Withhold  no  atom's  atom,  or  I  die, 
Or  living  on  perhaps,  your  wretched  thrall. 

Forget,  in  the  mist  of  idle  misery. 
Life's  purposes — the  palate  of  my  mind 
Losing  its  gust,  and  my  ambition  blind  ! 

1819. 


SONNETS.  393 


XX. 

KEATS'S  LAST  SONNET. 

Bright  star  !  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art- 

Not  in  lone  splendor  hung  aloft  the  night, 
And  watching,  with  eternal  lids  apart. 

Like  Nature's  patient  sleepless  Eremite, 
The  moving  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 

Of  pure  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores. 
Or  gazing  on  the  new  soft  fallen  mask 

Of  snow  upon  the  mountains  and  the  moors — 
No — yet  still  steadfast,  still  unchangeable, 

Pillow 'd  upon  my  fair  love's  ripening  breast, 
To  feel  for  ever  its  soft  fall  and  swell, 

Awake  for  ever  in  a  sweet  unrest. 
Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender-taken  breath, 
And  so  live  ever — or  else  swoon  to  death.* 

*  Another  reading : — 

Half-passionless,  and  so  swoon  on  to  death. 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

THE 
HANES  FOUNDATION 

FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  THE 

ORIGIN  AND  DEVELOPMENT 

OF  THE  BOOK 

ESTABLISHED  BY  THE  CHILDREN  OF 

JOHN  WESLEY  AND 

ANNA  HODGIN  HANES 


RARE  BOOK  COLLECTION 

Keats 
PR4836 
.M5 
1848b 


4 


•r:    Tt".    yr.    .-+:    n^.    .-^     :^    :^    rr.    r^     n^    tt:    .t:    tt:    ^     rr: 
.^:     :¥.     T^.     'M     ':¥.     '^.     ':¥.     '^.     '0.     '^.     '^.     .^'     'M     '^.     0.     iH 

^  .^-  i^  :*:■  i^:  i^  '^.  '^.  0.  '0.  .^  M  M  T^.  i^.  i^: 

^'  .^*  Hif  .4{r-  :=f=:  :^-  :^:  •^-  ,^  iftr-  ^'  :^:  Ith:  i^^  :^;  -r^: 
'y^.  '^.  .^  .■^"  M  '^.  .^  ^;  .^"  r{^'  i^  i^  :■*:  :*■:  :+-;  '^i 

^     '^.     'r^     ^"     ^;     Tin     ^"     rlr     .^     rfr     .^:     'M     :¥^.     M     i^.     7\^. 

*:    'M    'M    '^.    '^.    'M    'M    '^    '^.    .^    .^"    H^    r^    f^    'M    ^ 

^  ^  7^  .^:  '^.  i^'  '^.  .^'  .^.  .^"  .^  i^  r^  i^  >h:  :*; 
.^  'M  M  '^.  'M  ^  i^.  .4r"  i^  .^  :*i  .^:  rk"  :*■;  r+r  :h 
^:  :-;f:  '^k"  :-*:  :^"  .^  .^'  f^"  '^.  '^.  '^:  '^.  '^.  'i¥.  '^.  :^: 

^:  'y^.  :+-:  r{^"  :■*■:  ^f-  :^'  .^"  rf^"  .^"  tI^  .^  :-^"  .^:  .^  :^ 
.^  ifk"  .^:  :^:  rf^  .^"  ^fi  .^"  .^  :^-  :^"  .^  .^  :^'  .^ir-  -^^ 

.^     .^     rl-     rK    .^:     7|r     tH:    .^    .^     rlr     .^     rk"     4}^     tI-     i^!     ri 
¥.    '^.     'i^.    ':^.    ':¥.    'M    't^.    'i¥.     'i¥.    :-^    i^;    :+:    i*:"    i+;    i*i     :*i 

:^  :-^  tK  .^'  ri^:  rin  :*:  tI^  :*■:  .^:  :*::*:  :-^  7}^:  :4-:  't\ 
^  ^  ^  T^  t¥:  ^  i¥:  w.  rfi  :^  '^.  :-^  'r^:  rfn  ri^:  '^: 
"   7?^  i^  :*:  •:^  .^  :^;  :^  .^  :;}?■:  :*:  :*:  :-^:  iht  .^  hj 


^  Hjii   i^ 


Ua 


:*■:  i^  pI^  :*-::*:  :-^:  'r^  tI-  i^  rfi  "ri^ 


.^:   :^  i^:  :-^  :^  ri^  i^r  :*i  i;}^  :={f:  Hifi  :={^  f^  :h^:  i^:  :=i 

¥.     ':¥.     'M    :-^     ':¥.     '^.    tK     'f^.     '0.     W:     t^     ^     7^     0     0    0 

rir  rir  ri^  i^  :*:  rth  ^  r{^:  '0.  ^k  :^:  f*-:.^^  :*:  :*•:  .^ 

:^  .^  i^ir  ■  'r^  pf  :  :*:  ri^  :^'  i^  i^'  rir  iH^  i^  :*■:  i+i  i^ 
¥.  '0  'M  'pfi  :-^:  '0.  '0.  '0.  rK  :■*:•  :^  :-=f:-  :={r:  i^r  :*:  :*■: 

^     '0     000i¥:0W:00mi^00i^0 
M     "i^     W:     W:     W:     0     Wi     '0.     f^     ^     ^     y^     ^    0     '0.     '^ 

^  0  7^  0  0  0  0  ':*■:  '0.  'M  ':^.  :*:  'm  '0.  '0.  :*•: 

rlr     r*^     ijfn     i^     ^     :^:     i^     i^     i*i     .^     i*i     i+i    tI-     t*^"    i^     r: 
0.     ':0.     •¥.    i^    y\r    0    j^    i^:     M    -0     m    m    7^    0    r\^    "M 

*■:       i^       '0.       '0.       'M       '0.       T^       0       7\r       -0       m       '0.       'M      'i¥.      'i¥^.       'i¥. 

0.  .^:  .^  :-^  .^'  '0.  '0.  i^"  .^  Tit'  .^  'rit  pfi  1=^  :h^:  f;fi 

.^"     i*:'    iHh    '0.    0.    0    i^"    .^    '0.    :*i    i*:"    i+i    .^"    '■^.    '-0.    '^ 

^.  f^:  .^"  rK  .^:  >}r  .^h'  '0.  .^:  :Hf  i^it  :*:  :^'  :■*:  :-^  ^^ 
*■:  Tih  :-^"  :+:  :;{r-  :=f:  i^  -r^i^,  ih^  .^"  ^it'  '?\z  .^'  ^i^  r^:  .^:j 

.!.•  M."  •.!.•  •.!.•  •.!.•  -.!.•  ■.!.•  M.*  M.'  M.*  M.*  M."  M-'  '-i-'  •!■'  '•l-'-B 


^.     :^:i^.     ^.     .-^     ^.     yf^.    y^.     ^.     y^.     .-^     .-^     .-^     rfp:     .#:     ?^ 

rfi  :-*i  pi^:  r*r  :*:  :-^  H^  r^  .^  .^  :^  .^  .^  .^  .^:  :•* 

!*i  ri^  .^  't^.  .^:  :+:  .^:  :+:  .^  rir  iiih  .^  :-^:  i^^:  ;■*•:  .^ 
^  rir  th:  :*■:  i^  .^  .^  i;^  if^:  i^  .^  ifi^  :*;  .^  .^  ^i^ 

:+:  'ri^:  .^:  .^  :-^  :^"  :^  :h+^  ri^  :^  :+::*:  .^  .^"  .^'  :+ 
:^  "r^  i*:  r^:  ;■+:  :^:  .^  :^  .^"  :^  .^  :+:  .^  ^f:  .^  .^r- 

rfi  :+:  .^  H^  .^  :*::*:  ifK  :*:  .^  i^:  :+:  ^  :*■:  p+r  ■^. 

i¥:W:^i¥:^^^i^W:^^     W:     W:     ^     ^     ^ 
i^     i¥:     \^     W:i^     ^     ?\^     y\^     ^     W:     W:     ^     ^     i^     yt^     ^ 


'i¥.    -M 


'~x-: 


■i¥:     m    ^     ^     ^     W: 


'■4:: 


^y\ry¥:^W:^r¥:7^yK 


0.    j^!    i¥.    j^ 


:n«: 


:+: 


■^.  ."^ 


i^h  1^  :^  >f^  i^ 


r{^:  .^  :^  '^ih  :*:  m  :^  .^  .^  .^  :^  f;i^'  'm  .^  .^  .^ 

i^  :4-:  :*:  f^  .^:  .^  .^:  .^  .^^  .^  .^  i^i^  .^  .^  .^:  .^ 

:+:  f^"  :■+:  iH?;  .^:  :^  :^  :-*:  ifje:  .^  :^:  .^  .^  .^^fi  .^-  .^ 
:■*:  7f^  iHr  :■*:  :;{^  .^  .4h  .^  :+■:  .^  .^^  :-4^  .^  .^'  -0.  .^" 

^"  'i^^.  :■*:  :h^  .^  hj^:  :-^  .^  .^i^!  .^:  .^  m  .^  .^-  .^:  .^ 

:*;  :■+:■  :*■:  :-^  :^:  .^  :^:  .^ih  .^  .^  :+:  .^1^  .^  .^:  .^ff^  ;.4-; 

.¥  '0.  0  y^  y^  yi^  0  m  '0.  0.  .^  .^:  .^  iHr"  :+:  iff 
^  .^  iHr  .^:  .4?:  :-Hr  rfr  .^  .^  :-;i^  .^*  .^  :*:  .^  i*-:  .^: 

^'  7f^  Tfr  :*:  :*■:  .^  ■■*■:  .^:  .^ifi  f^-  .^;  .^-  .^-  .^:  .^:  .^ 
'0.  m  .^  .^  .^:  .^  .^  :-^:  :^  .^  .^  :+■:  .^:  :*•:  .^-  w 

'y^.  '0.  .^  .^  .^:  .4-  :+:  .^:  0.  -m  .^:  .^  :•*:  .^  .^  .^ 
^'  .^'  :*:'  .^"  .^:  .^  .^  .^  .^"  .^  .^:  .^  .^;  .^:  :*•:  .^: 

y:;    y:.-     4^    -4;:    -a::    4::    a::    -ac    -^    -a::    ac    .^    -^    -^    -^    .±. 


«iufHuiilmiiiiitiMiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiitiililiihiii)>)iiHt]ii 


